Red As Love and Death
by LA Knight
Summary: “You can’t keep it all inside. Write it down, share it, like I have, or it will destroy you. When you have, come find me again. I’ll be waiting - Red." Two Jungle Fury Rangers find a journal in Dr. Oliver's library & discover a strange and shocking tale.
1. 00P1 Pages in a Book

**Red As Love and Death**

**.**

**Prologue  
****Pages in a Book**

.

.

It was red, hand-tooled leather and gold-edged pages thinner than ice-cold breath. It was hidden on a shelf, tucked between several other books with leather covers and gold and silver pages. But something about it drew her to touch it, drew her to pull it from the shelf and flip it open, read the black handwriting on the inside cover of the book.

Lily found it, but Casey read it.

"_It was an accident,_" he read slowly, carefully. "_That's all it was_."

Casey looked up from the words written on the pages, staring at Lily. By rights, they shouldn't have been here. It was the library of Doctor Tommy Oliver, on loan because Theo wanted to study the history of the Rangers. But somehow, Casey didn't think the Black Dino Ranger knew that this book was here. It was just a feeling, but for some reason… there was something that gave him the idea that they shouldn't have been reading this.

"This feels private," Lily murmured.

She glanced helplessly at the book, feeling something like tears pricking angrily at her eyes. There was something strange about the words in this book. It wasn't meant to be read, she could feel that in her blood. This book held a secret, a strange and special secret, private. It wasn't meant to be read, but something plucked at her, plucked at her attention and her thoughts, called to her. The book wanted to be read and yet the secrets within its pages seemed so private. For some reason, whatever this "accident" was frightened Lily. It made her think of smoldering hell just before dusk, as light slowly gave way before the oncoming, ever-present darkness.

"But what was an accident?" Casey asked her. "I feel like we ought to find out. It could be something important to the Power Rangers."

"Casey! This sounds like someone's diary. We shouldn't be reading that."

"It's in Dr. Oliver's library. We asked him before if there was anything we weren't supposed to read and he didn't mention anything. This book is kind of obvious. I doubt he'd be able to forget it. Don't go chicken on me, Lily. I wanna know what's in this book. It sounds really interesting."

"It just… feels wrong."

"Why?" He demanded.

"I don't know! I want to know more, I do. I really want to know what's in that book, but it just feels-"

"_I wanted to know my future_," Casey read on, ignoring her protests. "_My mother was a witch - she knew how to read the signs. I was learning, but I couldn't control it well. It was a silly wish, but I had the power to make it come true. What I saw was just an accident, but it was_-"

"Casey!" Lily cried.

"_It was enough to send me and mine straight to hell_!" The Red Jungle Ranger finished with something like triumph. Then he realized what he'd read, and froze, staring with wide eyes at the pages. "What?" He whispered softly. "I… I don't understand… what does she mean?"

"I… I don't know," Lily whispered, shocked. "What could possibly… who is this? Who's journal is this?"

"I don't know," Casey said softly, flipping back to the inside cover. "I have no clue whatsoever. What could she possibly have seen that was so awful?" He searched frantically for a name, an address, anything, on the inside flap. His eyes alighted on what seemed to be the hastily scribbled words on the flyleaf. Unlike the rest of the journal, these words were written in crimson ink, redder than fresh blood.

_"You can't keep it all inside.  
Write it down, share it, like I  
have, or it will destroy you.  
When you have, come find  
me again. I'll be waiting."_

_- **Red**_

The Red and Yellow Jungle Fury Rangers read the words inscribed on the flyleaf at least three times before they met each others' eyes. This was… so secretive, so mysterious, so strange. What did it all mean? What was so important that it _had_ to be written down in this journal? And who was "Red?"

"It was a Red Ranger," Casey murmured in soft disbelief. "A Red Ranger gave this journal to someone. But which one?"

"Dr. Oliver? He was a Red Ranger once."

"We'll find out if we read it."

"Yes," Lily replied. "Yes, we will."

"So you're okay with reading it now?" The Red Ranger asked softly, touching the flyleaf almost reverently. It was soft as down beneath his fingertips. "No 'it's too private?'" At his words, Lily shook her head. Something in that message, scribbled with the intensity of some deep emotion, touched her somewhere strange inside. Like the ringing of phantom bells, or the whispered summons of ghosts.

"Read it, Casey," she whispered. "Read it."

Casey settled back into his chair, touching the edge of the page to turn it gently, and found the first paragraph. He sought out the last words he'd read, about hell, and found the next sentences the writer of the journal had hastily penned. He could tell this had either been written in great haste or with burning intensity, because the writing was sloppy, though not unreadable, and many words were crossed out. Some of the Is weren't dotted, and a few haphazard Ts uncrossed.

"_My curiosity got the better of me when I followed the whimsical wish in the back of my mind, that strange desire I succumbed to, trying to see the vastness of my destiny. Like any life, it twisted and turned, strange and wonderful and far too complex for me to see, much less understand,_" the Red Ranger continued to read. "_But I did see one thing that made sense - my enemy. Dark hair, eyes burning with fury and the love he had for his Rangers. I saw pain in his eyes, and wondered why my mother had never tried to sway him to our side. He was different than I'd expected, different in my vision than how I knew him to be. There was a girl with him, fighting the nefarious forces often pitted against them both._

_"I knew, somehow, that he was my destiny. I would kill him, that crimson-clad Power Ranger, or die. It was that simple. He was - he still is - my destiny._"

.

.

.

.

**So, that's my prologue. This is actually not about the Jungle Fury Rangers, but I wanted the newest batch of Rangers to find the journal. My heart leads back to Space Rangers and before, so my hunky Red Ranger protagonist is (probably) from that era. Anyway, this is from first person, a first (well, second - only one other 1st person fic ever) for me, so please, tell me how I can improve. I love reviews, even if they're critiques. This is T-rated, but I do dark stuff generally - self abuse, alcoholism, drugs, angst. I'm not sure if this fic will have that in here or not, so we'll see. It's as my Muse moves me. Currently she's curled up in a potato chip bag, purring, so I figure I'm good for now. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the prologue. I will try to have a new chap out before the end of April (as my laptop should be getting fixed soon) but I do have at least 5 other fics sucking my lifeforce from my body: Lord of the Rings, Pitch Black, the Dark Knight, Ronin Warriors, and Sky High. Check them out if you like. =) **

**Ciao!**


	2. 00P2 Empty Pages

**Red As Love and Death**

**.**

**Prologue II  
****Empty Pages**

.

.

"This is so weird," Fran heard Lily say. The dark haired girl came into the library, blinking as she shoved her brown hair out of her face and adjusted her glasses. She saw Casey and Lily huddled together on the black leather sofa by one of the tall, black reading lamps. She knocked briefly but loudly on the doorframe to announce her presence and called, "What is so weird?"

"This," Lily replied, hefting a red leather book. "Holy crow, you have to read this. It's a journal."

"Who's?"

"I don't know. There aren't any female red rangers, and this is a girl. And she's talking about the Red Ranger being her enemy."

"Maybe," Casey said, pondering as he stared absently at the handwritten pages. "Maybe it's Astronema. We've all heard the stories, right? The Red Space Ranger, Andros, his sister was the enemy of the Power Rangers for years. Maybe this was her journal. Except...." And now he sounded a little put out, as if some humongous flaw in his theory had just presented itself. "Except how would Dr. Oliver get it? That's the question. Unless the journal belonged to Katherine Hilliard?"

"The Pink Zeo Ranger?" Fran asked, taking the journal from Lily. She scanned the first page, drinking in the information with her eyes. "Maybe. She and Dr. Oliver had a thing, didn't they? They dated, once upon a time. Maybe that's what the author meant by 'my destiny.' The Pink Ranger was destined to be with the Red Ranger."

"But they're not," Lily muttered, running a trembling hand through her hair. "They're not together, and the beginning of this journal seems like it was recently, looking back on a long time ago."

"Only one way to find out," Casey replied, taking the book back from Fran. "Let's read some more.

"_I should probably say how I got the journal, before I talk about how I got into this awful mess. The former might be easier than the latter. Then again, he gave me the journal right before I was stabbed in so many tender places by things sharper than knives. How many times have I been stabbed, shot? How many times have I been stabbed and shot for his sake? I don't think I'll ever figure out the answer to that one. But that's not the point of this entry. This entry is to set the stage, to tell whomever may read this how it all came about. And to show the reason I'm writing it all down, even though I'd rather drop dead of old age than write in a stupid journal. I don't know what about the idea makes me nervous, but maybe there are things I don't want to know about myself. I've heard from lots of people that writing in a diary is a good way to self-therapy yourself. Maybe that's why I'm so resistant. There are things I don't want to know about myself. I've been in darkness for a long time. I don't know if I can step into the light, any kind of light. Even if it's just in the pages of this diary._

_"But he asked me to, and I have to. Damn the Red Ranger, anyway."_

.

It was red, hand-tooled leather and gold-edged pages thinner than ice-cold death. It looked expensive, more expensive than I would've expected him to buy. But it didn't matter. I couldn't have cared less about the money the man in front of me had spent on this gift - it was a _gift._ He rarely bought things for me. I was a princess - of a sort - and had no need for material things I could get myself. The book, however, was special because it came from him.

But there was something strange about his expression, the nameless emotion in his eyes. I didn't like it. It frightened me.

Shoving the thick, nearly unmaneagable strands of my black hair out of my face, I glanced around anxiously at the pearly white sands of the moonlit California desert, the strangely bright stars like chips of diamond cold ice burning in the black velvet night, the gluttonously fat moon. The pale orb was reflected in my large, dark eyes - I could see that reflection in the curve of my glasses' lenses. I didn't want to look into the dark eyes watching my every move, noting every expression crossing my burning face, every feeling flickering behind my eyes. Instead, I glanced down at the red leather volume in my hands, caressed the spine with gentle fingertips. There was no title inscribed in the leather. The gold-gilt pages were cool and smooth against her fingertips. A black device, too abstract and shard-like to be discernable, was etched into the center of the front cover. I traced over the design with one finger, concentration on it, trying to commit it to memory. Anything, so long as I didn't have to look into his face. There was a coldness there that hadn't been before.

"It's a journal," he told me softly.

I loved journals, especially the pretty kind. I could write my ideas, my dreams - not the aspiration kind, but the ones you have when you're asleep - anything at all. I could write plans I had for things, plans for holidays and adventures and nefarious plots to take over unoccupied asteroids. The one thing I wouldn't do was write about my thoughts, how I felt about my life. I was melancholy on a good day, suicidal on a bad one. I didn't need to make myself worse by reading about how depressed I was. Would it help? In the long run, it probably would. but in the short term, I might not make it to the long term. I couldn't be sure. I couldn't risk it.

"Thank you," I whispered, still looking resolutely away from the withdrawn expression, the distant posture, the blank and empty eyes like glossed mahogany. "I love it. It's beautiful."

I glanced at a leopard gecko scuttling over my black slipper, its tiny claws tickling my foot. It paused for a moment, looked around for danger, before scurrying away. Finally, I had no choice but to meet his piercing gaze. It slapped me in the face like a frigid blow, and I couldn't stop myself from flinching, even though I'd braced myself to meet his eyes.

"You need to use it," he said.

"Of course," I replied, humoring him. I knew what he wanted, but I believed it to be silly. Why should I write my life story in this silly little book?

"No," he said firmly. His eyes were like twin pieces of tiger's eye, hard and cool, dark brown banded by gold. "Not 'of course.' Don't tell me 'of course' like you're actually going to do it. You need to actually use this, okay? I had Alpha analyze your handwriting and style, and this journal should be big enough that you can write your side of the story. It will just fill the book if you don't waste any pages."

I scoffed. "That again? Why do you keep bothering me about that? We don't need to write our story or however you wanna phrase it. We don't even have a story. I mean, we're not Romeo and Juliet, exactly, are we?" I had to keep thinking that. There were too many similarities between our story and that one already. I didn't want to jinx it. I wanted to make sure nothing screwed this up. One little mistake, and one of us would die. "We're not going to kill ourselves over each other, are we?" Well... maybe he wouldn't. If he died, though, I couldn't guarantee the same thing. Maybe I did need some therapy. "We're just two people who happen to like each other-"

"Raze," he murmured. "You're so in denial, you're up a river without a paddle. We're not just your average teenagers. You're not a teenager, period. You're an intergalactic evil princess... who's... not actually evil."

"Debatable," I replied. We debated often whether or not I counted as an evil princess or not. On the one hand, my mother and step-father attempted on an almost daily basis to take over and/or destroy Angel Grove/California/the United States/North America/the Earth/the Universe, or - most importantly - the Power Rangers, and I was sometimes counted as instrumental in the implementation of their nefarious plans. Since up until Red's junior year, I had actually enjoyed engaging in various forms of evil and wrong-doing, I tended to shove myself into the "evil people" category. The Red Ranger, on the other hand, had a different idea. They all did, actually. It was rather unnerving. I wasn't used to arguing with people about how awful I was.

"Not debatable. Look... you need to write this story, all right?"

"This is... this is ridiculous. Why are you making me do this?" I demanded. "I'm not going to write in this journal, no matter how pretty is, unless I get to write what I want to write. I mean, I might want to write _Razielle's Diabolical Schemes for Over Throwing Dark Specter,_ or something like that, ya know? What if that's what I want to write and not some pathetic love story with no real plot to it?"

"Who's Dark Specter?" He asked when I paused for breath.

Oops. Hadn't meant to say anything about him. I mean, I was plotting out a book by that title, but no one was supposed to know about it. That kind of thing can get a girl killed, ya know what I mean? And I couldn't tell Red - my pet name for him - who Dark Specter was yet. Call me superstitious, but my parents had always said, to say the name is to summon the man. Sort of like that Earth saying, speak of the Devil and he shall appear. I wasn't going to risk it, not when my entire future happiness depended on the Big Bad Boss staying as far away from Angel Grove - and the Earth - as possible.

That was another reason I didn't want to write in this book. I was a teenager - basically. Ten thousand years in cryogenic stasis in a space dumpster didn't change that. I had no privacy at my... house. If my parents found this journal, with all this information in it, I'd be screwed, and worse, Jason would be in danger. Not just from my parents, but from the Big Boss. Like I said, I wanted Red off of Dark Specter's radar for as long as possible. Forever, if I could manage it. Even Zordon in his prime was no match for Dark Specter alone.

"Um... never mind. Look, Red, the point is, this is silly. Why are you pushing this? I mean, unlike you, I don't have random, almost uncontrollable urges to blurt out my life story to strangers. So I don't feel the need to share our relationship, even in writing, and chance my parents discovering it. Or even my best friend! I do not want to stumble upon your cold, grey corpse one day and find you've been impaled by a giant stinger!"

.

"_I never told him," _Casey read on, "_but finding him dead was my worst fear. There was - is - only one other thing that could compare to seeing him die, or finding him dead, and that has already happened. I don't want to write about this, but it seems like I have to. Now that I've started, I can't seem to stop. If I don't, I feel like I might choke on my own grief._

_"Huh. How pretentious does that sound? I hate that word, grief. 'I hate the word, as I hate Hell, all Power Rangers, and thee,' Red. Funny, what I said before, about us not being Romeo and Juliet. Seems like we are, now. Except... when did Romeo ever repudiate Juliet? When did the Montague pretty boy tell the Capulet Lord's fair daughter, 'Sorry, babe, but until you teach a leopard to change its spots, that's it for us? No more sending secret messages via servants, no more getting married by the priest in a cheap Las Vegas chapel.' Wait, that was only in the '96 version. Whatever. Being maudlin makes me quote seventeenth century British literature. Who knew?"_

For several moments, the three teenagers only stared at the hastily scrawled words inside the journal. Casey felt a lump rise up in his throat, and no matter how hard he swallowed, it wouldn't go away. His eyes burned, as if he'd been reading for hours, and not just twenty minutes. Blinking rapidly, he handed the journal off to the Yellow Jungle Ranger, who accepted it reluctantly and found the place where the Red Jungle Ranger had left off.

_"I don't want to write what happens next,"_ Lily read, feeling something akin to panic surge up in her chest. "_I don't want to even think about what happened out there in the California desert outside of Angel Grove. Just getting to this point makes me feel as if my stomach were trying to shoot up my throat and out my mouth. I feel dizzy, and my chest aches, as if a great weight were threating to crush me. I can barely breathe, my chest aches to hard. I don't want to think about it, but I promised Red... I promised him. And I always keep my promises, damn it. Even to that scum bucket Red Ranger who punched a hole in my ribcage and ripped out my heart_."

.

"Promise you'll write our story down."

"Why?" I knew I was whining. I knew it. But I didn't care. When Red really asked me for something, I couldn't say no, even if it was something I really didn't want to do. How the hell had I ended up eating out of the palm of the Red Ranger's hand? I mean, I was a galactic evil entity. Why was I head over heels in love with one of the leaders of the Forces of Good and Puppies and Rainbow Ducks? Huh? It made - still makes - absolutely no sense. But maybe it would help. Maybe it would actually de-stress me. Maybe it would even be fun.

And maybe I'd get Jason killed. It wasn't like I could just leave this thing anywhere to hide it, either. My mother is a witch. She can find anyone anywhere anytime. If I'm writing in my journal when she happens to be looking for me, the jig is up and the Power Rangers are dead. I can't just do something with massive consequences like that.

"Just promise."

"Fine," I huffed, and, tucking the journal under my chin, held out my hands, arms crossed at the elbows, six fingers curled in, thumbs tucked under, pinkies extended. "I, Princess Razielle Zeta, harbinger of death and destruction, sub-supreme sovereign of Earth's moon, Luna, and the creepy castle upon its surface, do solemnly double pinky swear to write the story of my tragic and irritating tale of Romeo and Juliet, in the modern era, Power Rangers and nefarious evil doers inserted." And I crooked both my pinkies around his and shook his hands via miniature digits. Was I telling the truth? Who knows? I hadn't decided whether I was giving in against my better judgment or lying to protect him.

"Thanks," he murmured, and smiled at me. I could see his dimple. I hate that dimple. It's so blasted cute. By rights, I shouldn't have even been looking at the blasted thing.

And even with the dimple, the smile wasn't the same.

"Now, was there anything else that made you look like someone died?" I demanded, though I really didn't want to know, even then. I could tell by the remoteness in his eyes, the chill to his manner. If I had the ability to sense auras without actually trying at it until my eyes crossed and I got a migraine, it probably would've been black veined with frigid ice blue. But I had no idea what his real problem was. I had no idea that he was going to totally throw me for a loop with what his issue was. "Nobody died, right?" I asked, suddenly frightened. What if someone had died? I would've heard from my parents if one of the Rangers had been murdered, or even Zordon, so who-

"Yeah," he mumbled, and his smiled slipped away. For the first time that night, I felt really cold. The wind clawed at my hair, gnawed my cheeks and nose. "Yeah, someone died."

"Oh my gosh!" I cried, and then wanted to hit myself for the childish expletive. How in the world had I become so bleeding G-rated? It was those goody-goody Power Rangers. They'd turned me into a Molly Mormon, practically. But my internal rant and irritation subsided as I pulled myself back to the present conversation and demanded earnestly, "Who, Red?"

"We did," he whispered. I stood there, stunned. I had no clue what he could possibly mean. I knew for a fact I was still alive and kicking. Dead people didn't feel the wind trying to eat their faces. I still retained all the feeling in my fingers and toes. What the heck was he even talking about?

"Red... are you... breaking up with me?"

It was the stupidest, craziest, most juvenile question in the entire universe. The only dumber one I could think of off the top of my head was "How do you spell icup?" And yet it was the only question that came to mind when he answered me. Of course I knew I was wrong. But I wanted him to tell me that, to tell me that for an intergalactic evil princess, I could sure be stupid sometimes. I could sure ask silly questions. Of course he wasn't breaking up with me. I was just jumping at shadows. I was being paranoid. I was being ridiculous and insecure. What an outrageous question. No, silly.

That's what he was supposed to tell me. Instead, he smiled. I was a window - he looked right through me and saw nothing. His eyes were empty. He leaned in and kissed me, once, on the forehead. It felt as chaste as being kissed by a brother or a maiden aunt or something. There was no fire, no fury, no feeling. It was emptier than air. It burned the skin beneath my bangs. My chest screamed, but my mouth was pressed tightly closed. The world felt cold.

"But-" I began, and he said, "Don't follow me, Raze. I really don't need a supervillain tagging along behind me like a naggy little sister. It's bad for my image."

I blinked as heat and electricity buzzed against my skin, and he was gone.

I smelled ozone, and despised Zordon for creating the transporter device the Red Ranger had used to escape me. I heard a beep, small and chirpy, like a baby bird, and looked down to see my communicator, a gift from Billy - with Zordon's permission - blinking redly. The little red lights flashed on and off for a moment and then died, becoming the color of dark blood in the night. I could feel the hum of it dying as it shut down. My communicator, my last real link to the life I had been building with the Red Power Ranger, had been severed. I was alone out there in the desert. I had two places I could go... to see my mortal friends, Kimberly, Trini, Aisha, and Kat, who might refuse me now that all of this had occurred, or home. I could go home, to a cold and dead satelite orbiting the planet _he_ lived on. I could go back to my parents' castle, my worst nightmare come true, and cry. I'd have to explain it to my parents. I was too out of it to really make it convincing. They would figure it out, and Jason would be the new number one target.

I heard screaming, far off in the distance. It lasted... maybe half an hour. I never found out where it was coming from, or how the girl who was screaming had managed to pitch her voice so she sounded just like me. After the screaming, there was silence. The moon burned low in the sky, fat and waxen and dead. The wind howled, and sand cut my skin. The ice air kissed me, but it was like a phantom, dead and cold and intangible. It wasn't nearly as bad as the empty brush of lips on my forehead that still burned my skin.

There was nothing there.

Nothing.

.

"_Now_," Fran read slowly, "_I have to go do something. I'll talk about how the story started later. Right now, I need to take a shower or something, and give my mind a rest._" The dark-haired girl glanced up at her friend, saw Lily had tears in her eyes, streaming down her cheeks. Casey's face was pale with shock, with pain. Fran lightly traced the words of one page and felt the sting-psszt of the emotions burned into the paper. Psychic ability could do that, after all. "_I'm going to go shower and change. Maybe check to make sure my half-brother hasn't succeeded in destroying this part of the universe yet._

_"Then I can think about my Red Ranger. Only then._"

.

.

.

.

**I made this a second prologue because it's still basically back story. The point of "Red As Love and Death" is to show how the Red Ranger and my OC got together in the first place, how she went from "must kill Red Ranger - EXTERMINATE!!!" to "love me, love me, say that you love me." I must say, the formula for the "break up" was inspired by New Moon, by Stephanie Meyer. And there are a few (I think 4 or 5) references to other literature, be they songs/movies/books, etc. One is so far out and random that if you actually catch it, you deserve an autographed novel from the Dragonlady, not to mention a cookie shaped like a beetle. Btw, those were two clues to help you find it. Anywho, so I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter of "Red as Love and Death." Sorry about the delay. This is obviously not the end of April. But I hope it was worth the wait. Reviews make my soul shine.**

**=D**


	3. Step One

**Red As Love and Death**

**.**

**Step One  
Infiltrate Angel Grove High as the New Girl**

.

.

The three teenagers stared at the leather-bound book in their hands, as if it were something repulsive. The expressions on their faces were identical, eyes wide, lips pressed into the thinnest, whitest lines. Lily's eyes were red-rimmed and flecked with gold, as if she were holding back tears. Fran pulled her glasses off and rubbed ineffectually at her eyes. Casey had to fight back the urge to feel hideously guilty just because he wore the Red Ranger uniform. The three looked at each other, and Lily wiped a tear away.

"Why did he break up with her?" Lily murmured. "It sounds like we're talking about some kind of stupid soap opera or something, but... I don't know. Reading this journal makes me want to cry."

"The author was a projective empath," a voice said from the doorway, and the three looked up to see Dr. Oliver leaning against the doorway, in a pair of black slacks and a green muscle shirt. Since leaving the Dino Thunder team, he'd let his hair grow out again. It would've brushed his shoulders, if it wasn't pulled back into a horse-tail. The look on his face was one of nostalgic melancholy. Fran found herself searching the plains of his face for some kind of clue as to what he was thinking, but couldn't seem to pick anything out from behind the cloud of his composure. She also noticed the wristband that said _Alpha and Omega._

"Dr. Oliver," Lily cried, and hastily got to her feet, followed closely by Casey. Fran followed last, glancing at everything except the retired Ranger's face. "We weren't sure if we... but you didn't say... we were curious-"

"Relax, guys. You're not in trouble. But I figured I ought to warn you that the person who wrote that journal was a very powerful projective empath. Make sure, if you start feeling sad or depressed, check in with me. I'll be in my office. That's my only condition if you want to keep reading. I don't want anyone trying to harm themselves just because they got to a depressing part in the story. All right?"

"Sure thing, Dr. Oliver," Casey replied, nodding in affirmation. "But... we gotta know, sir."

Tommy Oliver arched an eyebrow, inviting inquiry, folding his arms across his broad chest. He had an idea what the Jungle Fury Rangers and Fran wanted to know, but then again, he could be wrong. And even if he was right, this story wasn't his to tell. It was Razielle's, and he would let her tell it her way.

"The girl in the story," Lily began hesitantly. "And the Ranger she wrote about. Who is it? Who are they? The girl... it's not Astronema, is it? And the Red Ranger, is it you? Please, we have to know. Who are these people? And how does the story end? I mean, do they... did they stay apart? The Red Ranger and Razielle? Or did they finally get together again? Why did they break up?"

Tommy sighed, and looked away. Yeah, he'd known what the Jungle Rangers were going to ask. Lily had a way about her that reminded him of Trini, even though they looked nothing alike. She had this winsome kind of little-girl charm that made her appear vulnerable, when she was anything but. And that wistful, adorable charm made him want to give her all the answers she had asked so desperately for. But he couldn't do that. It wasn't his place. At least... he couldn't tell her everything. Only a few things.

"The girl... well, she's a grown woman now. She's the intergalactic supervillain, Princess Razielle Zeta, who until the time of Andros and the Space Rangers worked - although unwillingly - for Dark Specter. You all have heard of him, of course."

"Yeah."

"Uh-huh," Casey replied, nodding. Fran added, "Of course. But who is she?"

"She's the reason we managed to make it until the final fight with Dark Specter. She took over the fight on Eltar after Zordon was captured, and sabotaged the Enemy's battles from the inside, leaked information to the Rangers, that kind of thing. She was the only villain not transformed by Zordon's energy when he was killed, which made all of us wonder about whether or not she was as much of a villain as she made herself out to be."

"So she really is a good guy?" Casey asked.

Tommy nodded, trying to speak past the lump in his throat. Yeah, Raze had been a good guy. She had been... until she'd been betrayed by the Red Ranger. Now she was back to being as evil as she'd ever been. Worse, in fact, because now she was fueled by rage.

"But who's the Red Ranger she's writing about?" Lily demanded. "She hasn't mentioned a name."

"If I know Razielle, it probably took her a while to get to the point where she'd be okay about using his name. You might have to be patient and wait a while. Even for an intergalactic supervillain, she was always-" - _easily broken_ - "melodramatic."

He swallowed, and turned away, biting his lip to fight back the urge to slam his fist into the door frame. He'd forgotten about that journal, but even if he'd remembered about it, he would never have forbidden access to it. The story of Princess Razielle and the Red Ranger was a story integral to the history and legacy of the Power Rangers, secret though it had been kept for more than fifteen years. He'd made a promise to keep all the Crimson Chronicles - the secret stories of the Red Rangers that no one had ever known before - safe in his library, for the perusal of future generations of Rangers. But that didn't make this story any easier to remember. After all, this one had nearly cost him his best friend, his team, and the woman who had honored him by becoming his wife. Even after all these years, it still hurt to remember.

That's why he walked away down the hall as quickly as he could when he heard Fran begin to read aloud.

_"I met him the first day of school. How ridiculous is that? I'd never been to school in my life, but it was all part of my mother's nefarious plan. Infiltrate a common Earth high school, pose as a normal Earth girl. Get close to the Rangers. Make their leader trust you. Trap him and ensnare him. And when he gets close enough to me, then do everything in my power to destroy him."_

.

I felt absolutely ridiculous. Here I was, standing by my mother's high-powered telescope, watching the Earth glow blue and pearl against the midnight backdrop of space... while my Mom's tech-man packed my backpack. How stupid could this whole thing get?

"Your Highness's textbooks," the fish-pale lackey was muttering to himself. Why does no one trust that I know what goes into my own school bag? I mean, it's not like it was rocket science or anything like that. I may have been new to the whole "just a regular Earth girl" thing, but I was still a teenager, by my species' standards at any rate. There were plenty of evil teenagers on Terra - I refuse, as of now, to call the planet "Earth" when everyone and their dog calls their respective planets Earth, even when we're not talking about the third planet from this solar system's sun.

Anyway, plenty of evil, teenage Terrans. Nothing to worry about. I'll totally fit in. So why was everyone spazzing about it?

"Notebooks, binders, primitive writing implements-"

"Pens, Uncle Fin," I reminded him gently. He might have been my mother and step-father's lackey, but he and the rest of the lackeys had helped raise this intergalactic villain of the monarchial persuasion since I had barely figured out that my feet were those weird, flat things on the ends of my legs - some several thousand years ago - and they were more like family to me. "Those are called pens."

"Strange," he murmured absently. "I see these 'pens,' but no pencils. Are you not required to use pencils in your mathematics courses?"

I cursed rudely in Eltaran, a language I'd picked up back when my family was allied - albeit in name only, and using the alliance as an excuse to spy on the forces of good - with Zordon and the Royal Family of the planet Eltar. Uncle Fin blushed, a pale dusting of blue along his pale, white face, and my best friend, Nina, laughed at me. I glared back at her and adjusted my silver-framed spectacles.

"Not funny," I informed her flatly. I could feel a throbbing beginning in my left temple, and wondered if headaches due to stress ran in my family. Ignoring the pain as best as I could, I hissed, "I _need _pencils for my Trig class. What am I supposed to do? If I don't have 'proper writing implements' I won't get any credit and I'll flunk out of the class!" She only laughed again, and I glared at her, humongously irritated. I knew that my parents and the others expected me to play the bad girl at my new school and so didn't care if I did well in my classes or not, but not me. I had more important things to do than flunk my first math class in three thousand years, like finally get my own peer group.

"Sweetheart," my step-father began. I mentally snorted. He was only calling me pet names because my mother was nearby. "I realize that you're excited about this, but let's keep the true purpose of this mission in mind. You're job is to spy on the Power Rangers and get into their confidences so that we can crush them."

"Yes, yes, I know," I retorted, irritated. He shot me a look, and I bowed my head, pretending to be contrite. "Yes, milord. I know my true purpose here."

"Very good. See that you don't forget it." He hesitated for a moment, then patted me on the shoulder, gingerly, as if too much force would make me explode like a nitroglycerin bomb. I knew that despite being an evil overlord, he was still nervous about being my step-dad, although I doubt it was out of consideration for me. He was more likely worried about my mother and her opinion of him. But that doesn't mean I didn't appreciate the gestures.

"Have a good day at school," he muttered after a long silence, and then stormed off, glowering at nothing. Old softie. Some interstellar supervillainous space warlord he turned out to be.

"Well," my Uncle Fin said in the following silence. "Everything else is here, including gym clothes and a spare outfit. You'll simply have to borrow a pencil from a classmate."

"Great," I muttered. "First day humiliation. Fun."

I sighed and took a peek through my mother's telescope, trying to lock onto Angel Grove High School, my new purgatorial niche. Not that I minded school... right then. In a week or two, I'd definitely come to loathe the educational institution. I will admit, from what I'd seen of Terran secondary schools, they were nothing compared to Eltar's education system.

"Bye, Mom."

"Run along, Razielle. Enjoy bringing destruction to our enemies," my mother replied.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

One of my parents' problems with me - the biggest problem by far, it seemed - was that I wasn't evil enough. I sure as hell wasn't a goody-goody by any means, but my parents always complained that the fires of evil doing just didn't seem to burn inside me. I was too mellow, they said, to be a supervillain of any caliber. If I wanted to rise in the universe and become a true harbinger of destruction, I needed to actually put my back into it. But that seemed like so much pointless and incredibly hard work. I'd rather just play my little part, watch stuff come together, and then sleep after the big bang. It seemed like, these days, I was always, always exhausted. I didn't have the energy to be a supervillain.

That fact made me wonder just how I was going to get the stamina and energy to last even a single day at an eight-hour per day Terran school, much less a full school year. I knew for a fact that this mission was going to take a while. Months, if not a year or more. How was I going to have the energy for that when half the time, I barely had the energy to eat?

Life wasn't exactly looking up at this point. Something was going to have to seriously change if I was going to pull this off.

I just didn't know what.

.

Fran tried to clear her throat, and found it dry as the desert. She made a grateful noise when out of nowhere, Theo, the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger, offered her a bottle of apple juice. Taking a grateful swallow, she cleared her throat, successfully this time, and glanced at Theo.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"About ten minutes," the Blue Ranger replied. "I noticed things were pretty quiet around the store, and I wondered if you guys had gone off on some mission without telling me. But RJ told me you'd gone to Dr. Oliver's library to see if there was anything interesting to be had from the stacks, and that you'd been gone for like, a couple hours or something. I wanted to know what you were up to. So, what's this?"

Lily and Casey quickly filled him in on the details of the journal while Fran flipped through it, making sure to mark her place with a finger inserted between the pages. She noticed that until the last perhaps twenty, thirty pages, the journal was written in black ink. But those last pages, the handwriting changed, and the ink turned to red. She quickly scanned the first page, but after the first line, she didn't want to read any further.

_I may have lost her forever. She took a shot aimed for me, even after I dumped her. Why would she do that?_

Fran bit her lip. The crimson ink, the change in handwriting - this was the Red Ranger's words. His words filled the last pages of the diary, and they filled the Ranger ally with portents of dark emotion. She suddenly wasn't sure if she wanted to finish reading this journal. What if it ended badly? She didn't want to read some tragic story about dying love.

Maybe this journal was a lot like Romeo and Juliet. After all, very few of the Red Rangers were still accounted for. Most of them had disappeared after Mission Red. Only the Wild Force Ranger and the ones to come after him were still in contact with Dr. Oliver. If any of them had died... would any other Rangers know about it?

"What's it say, Fran?" Lily asked, and the other girl glanced up. "What comes next?"

"You know, I'm tired. Can someone else read now?"

"I will," Theo replied, and took the proffered red leather book. "Let's see, where were we? Oh, yeah. _So I went to school that day. Immediately. I discovered that my mother had set everything up so I could shmooze my way into the Power Rangers' circle of confidence. I was even in their classes. The first one I met was someone I knew very well, but it didn't surprise me that, with all my masks in place, he didn't recognize me._

_My mother's ex pet Ranger."_

.

Sucky as all get out, I ended up in the goody-goody ex-pet's physical education class. Worst possible thing ever. And not only was I in the same class as the pet Ranger, but I shared the class with Ms. Sunshine Yellow and their sucky team leader, the Red Ranger. Stupid Greenie. I knew I ought to have kicked him off that cliff in the lunar sea when I had the chance. Luckily, none of them recognized me. After all, without the evil makeup and the stellar super-hairstyles, I looked like a totally different girl. And losing my boots took at least three inches off my height.

"Hey, you're new, right?"

I looked up to see the Red Ranger, in plainclothes, a red muscle shirt and black jeans. I felt a little irritated that he could dress the way he wanted, but I was stuck in these dorky white shorts and blank t-shirt. I hated wearing white bottoms. I hated wearing white, period. It showed too many stains. And the only other person even close to being in uniform was Ms. Pinky, but even she sported her typical pink clothing article.

"Yeah," I replied, slightly miffed. "I'm Rachel."

Rachel. What a ridiculous name. What a stupid name. But it was close enough to my real name that I wouldn't blow cover by not responding to it when people called me. Yeah. I was Rachel Zech, instead of Razielle Zeta.

He gave his name, not that I didn't know it already, but I had to pretend, of course. What exactly was I supposed to do, anyway? Pretend to have the hots for Mr. Crimson Creep? Oh, yes, and his super muscles. Blah. The only thing even close to attractive about the Red Ranger was his smile. It was open, friendly, something I'd never had a chance to see in my encounters with him before. And when it quirked his mouth, a dimple appeared. A freaking dimple. That was just... disgusting. How did a teenage boy, a Junior in high school, end up with a dimple?

"So, where'd you transfer from?" Jason asked me. I contemplated ignoring him, but decided against it. I was supposed to be being nice, despite how uncomfortable this Red Ranger was making me.

"E-Eldarus Secondary School." Damn. I'd been about to say the Eltaran Secondary School for the Arts. I needed to be careful with what I said. It had been too many centuries since I'd had to watch what I said around people. Not since being on Eltar. Sigh.

"Where's that?"

"Rome," I replied hastily, after a second or two of frantic thought. "Me and my parents move around a lot."

"That's rough," he said, and I realized that we'd been moving slowly towards the wooden bleachers inside the indoor gymnasium. "How long do you guys plan to stay here?"

"My step-dad promises we're going to be here for a while. At least long enough for me to get out of school. My uncle says its not healthy for my 'educational development' to transfer so often." I shrugged off the comment about" rough." He was being awfully nice to a strange girl he'd never met before. Somehow, I had the feeling that if and when he discovered my true, evil identity, he would stop being so friendly. Perhaps he'd even try to kill me. Wouldn't that just be so absolutely fun? Fighting the Red Ranger always gave me a good workout.

I took a seat on the bleachers, hating the way the shorts hugged my legs. How chunk-tastically disgusting could a pair of gym shorts make a girl feel?

"Made any friends yet?"

Irritation. Supreme irritation. Was he trying to say that I should've been able to make friends already? I'd been on campus perhaps half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. At least twenty of those minutes were taken up by getting all my irritating paperwork, like my schedule and such. How dare he criticize me?

"It's only first period," I replied testily. He held up his hands, the universal gesture of surrender. The smile with that dimple disappeared.

"I was just wondering. Sorry."

I sighed. I needed an excuse for being such a witch. I couldn't afford to alienate the leader of the Power Rangers. He was integral for the plan to infiltrate the goody-goody team's secrets. Which presented me with several questions I'd have to think about later, such as how I was going to get close to them, finding out their secret identities (sort of), without them getting fired? Because I knew - as my parents knew - that if the Rangers' identities were discovered, they could no longer be Rangers. The reason we hadn't revealed them to the world was because then, Zordon would just get another batch of teenagers.

But I'm digressing.

"Sorry. I just... I hear that a lot. 'Make friends, Rachel. You should be more outgoing. Be nicer to people. Don't be so defensive. Don't worry about the fact that if you make any friends you won't be able to see them ever again in six months or less.' I just get supremely irritated when people talk about me making friends. I don't make friends easily."

"Well, we can be your friends," Ms. Pinky interrupted. Apparently she'd been eavesdropping.

"Are you just saying that 'cause I'm the new girl? Because if so, not interested. I've had that happen too many times. People tell me, 'we'll totally be your friends.' And then after the novelty of the new girl thing wears off, they drop me like a hot potato."

"Well," Jason said, gently. "We're not like that." And he smiled again. This time, I saw teeth _and_ the dimple. I found my mouth twitching, and before I knew it, I was smiling, too. Goodness galaxies, these two were some kind of goody-goody. Who could be that nice to someone they didn't even know? What was their deal? But then I had a thought that almost wiped the smile off of my face. They would hate me - the way they all hated me - when they discovered who I really was. It was an effort to keep my smile in place. It was easier looking at that ridiculous dimple.

"Yeah." The Green Ranger, my mother's old pet, smiled at me as he said this. "Fair-weather friends, we certainly are not. So don't worry, uh... what's your name?"

"Rachel. Rachel Zech."

"Rachel. I'm Tommy. This is Kim, and you've already met Jason."

"Hey," the Pink Ranger murmured, smiling.

She cracked her gum and held out her hand. I shook it, marveling at how slender and delicate her hands were, how long and slim her fingers. I wish I had hands like hers, instead of stubby fingers and hands scarred from fights, and knuckles the size of boulders. I bit my tongue, swallowing the comments trying to spew out of my mouth. I was never good with dealing with competition, even in the simple matter of prettier hands.

"Hi," I said simply.

"So, what's your next class?"

"Um...." I fished my schedule out of my backpack. "Weight training. What? How did I get two PE classes in a row?" I smashed it back into the small pocket and kicked my feet childishly against the bleacher. "But Maaaaaaaaaaaaaahm!!"

"Mom?" Kim arched an eyebrow.

"My mom _swore_ to me she would set me up with a cool schedule. Instead, I have... blah. Weight training. I quit weight training a year ago because I was getting man shoulders."

The Red Ranger had the audacity to laugh at me. I glared at him from behind the cover of my bangs. Why was he laughing at me?

"Man shoulders?" He asked, and Kimberly whapped him on the arm. "Ow, what?"

"It's a reasonable concern. Why were you in weight training?"

"My mother said I needed to stop focusing on intellectual persuits like reading. She gave me time to reach my reading goal and then told me to focus on something else, like martial arts. Then I lost a fight and ended up in... in the hospital," I stumbled over trying to say 'infirmary.' "So my mother said I needed to get stronger before I was ready to actually win a fight."

"Have you tried Judo?" The Red Ranger asked me, concerned. "The style allows the smaller, weaker opponent to overcome the bigger, stronger one."

I shook my head. I'd tried Karate, but that's it. Well, and the El-Ti-Ran Way from the planet Eltar. I'd learned from Zordon himself. Besides being a warrior and, at one time, the leader of the Eltaran Power Ranger team, he was also the teacher for the prep school for those wanting to enter the ranks of the Power Rangers.

"That would keep you out of the hospital," Jason added, eyeing my face.

I knew what he was looking at - the thin, blood red scar running from my hairline to my chin. Almost immediately, I felt my temper spike. I'd been telling the truth about that fight. I'd ended up slashed, stabbed, broken, and bleeding before the end, my face in ruins. Because of that fight, I had been sent away to the medical planet, Sythar, to have my face fixed. It had taken a little more than a year to accomplish, and so I'd missed out on most of the early battles with the Power Rangers.

But I had to keep my ire to myself. I smiled, forcing a somewhat pleasant expression to my face, and nodded acknowledgement. Then the bell rang.

"That was short," I said, then remembered that today, the first day of school, we had all ten classes in one day, instead of block scheduling like normal. So we had ten forty-five minute classes, and the same amount of time for lunch. Apparently, I was in a nine-hour day school. We started at 7:30am and got out at 4:30pm. Bloody hell. "Never mind."

"So, weight training," Jason said, grinning at me.

"Man shoulders," I moaned, sincerely depressed about the whole thing. "Man shoulders. Oh, the humanity."

"At least you have class with Jason and me," Tommy said.

I hid my grimace.

.

_"So that was why my delightful mother had placed me in the horrendous, man-shoulder inducing period of purgatory. Because I would be sharing classes with the Red and Green Power Rangers. Why was I not surprised?" _

Theo finished the page he was on and blinked before looking at the others. Fran and Lily were smiling now. They were miles away from the depression that had poured off of them when the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger had come into the room earlier. Theo had an idea that it had something to do with the wry sarcasm and dry humor in this most recently read piece of the crimson bound journal. Whereas the girl, Razielle, had seemed almost suicidally depressed when talking about how she got the journal and how the Red Ranger broke her heart, now she sounded like a normal teenager talking about the trials and tribulations of high school.

"Wow. What a total one-eighty. She almost sounds happy," Casey said.

"I think," Lily said softly, looking thoughtful. "I think that though she's still bitter about the breakup, the memories of the events leading up to that point might be happy ones. Meeting Jason, for instance. I bet that memory still makes her smile, even though they've broken up."

"You sound like you have first-hand experience with this."

"Well, yeah." Lily blushed and looked at her lap, fidgeting with her hair. "I've had a boyfriend or two that turned out to be pretty crummy, but even so, we still had some good times together. It's probably the same in this case."

"Lil's gotta good point," Fran murmured. "At any rate, it's much easier to read this bit than the break-up. Goll-lee, but that was depressing."

"Tell me about it," Casey replied. "I think it's mine turn again, Theo, if you want to quit for a while."

"Nah, I'm good. So the Red Ranger she's talking about is... Jason Lee Scott. The original Red Ranger. The first Red Ranger fell in love with a supervillain? One of our enemies? That's just bizarre. Of course, she doesn't sound like much of a villain. More like a very disinterested lackey or something. But still... how could a Ranger love a supervillain?"

"Well," said Dr. Oliver from the doorway. Everyone jumped. "It's not like there isn't a precedent. I kind of set that precedent myself. After all, I was the evil Green Ranger, and the Pink Ranger was in love with me during the time I was under Rita's spell. And I ended up with a crush on the Pink Ranger that replaced her, who also happened to be under Rita's spell when I met her."

"Well, yeah," Theo replied. "But that's just it. You were under a spell. And you're talking about Dr. Hillard, right? She was under a spell too. But Jason fell in love with Razielle - it sounds like, anyway - while she was evil. I mean... wouldn't you just... kinda... _know_ that this person is evil, and therefore bad? Not okay to date? It's different if there's magic or brainwashing involved, in my opinion, so the fact that the Silver Space Ranger ended up marrying Astronema - after she reverted to her original form as Korone, I might add - doesn't count, either. Same goes for the Wolf Wild Force Ranger and the Princess Shayla."

"You've never met Justin Stewart," Dr. Oliver said, voice calm. He had one point to make. "He was the Blue Turbo Ranger. You've also never met the Witch of the Wastes, but she was one of Astronema's lieutenants. She also had a daughter named Sophie. The Witch of the Wastes attacked San Francisco, where Justin was staying with his dad. What she didn't know was that Justin and Sophie had been dating for a year while Sophie was stationed on Earth to keep her away from Dark Specter, and the only reason most of southern California wasn't decimated by the enemy was because Sophie agreed to sabotage all of her efforts - because she loved Justin. So you'll notice, Theo, guys, that having a significant other on the side of darkness can often come in handy. People like us tend to attract either other people like us, or we attract people that walk in the shadows. Razielle, like Sophie, was one of those women that walked in the shadows. You gotta respect someone who can walk the line like that."

And with that ponderous thought, Tommy walked out, trying to shake off the nostalgia in his marrow.

"What was that about?" Theo wondered. Fran jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. "Ow! What?"

"You've never heard? Dr. Oliver has never really gotten over the fact that he only became a Ranger originally because of Rita Repulsa's evil schemes," the girl snarled. "He still feels guilty about all the things he did as the evil Green Ranger. Do you know he almost killed the Pink Ranger? And that's not all." Fran looked around and lowered her voice. "Kimberly Hart never told anyone until years after she'd retired, but she and Dr. Oliver had a million adventures against each other when Dr. Oliver was evil that none of the other Rangers ever knew about."

"Really?" Lily asked. She had a keen interest in the history of the Pink Rangers. "Is that in a journal in here too?"

"Guys," Casey called. He'd gotten up while Theo and Fran were talking and wandered back over to the stacks. He had two other leather-bound books in his hands, one black with silver gilt lettering, the other a pink so dark it looked nearly red with a green trim that was almost black, and an embossed rose with needle sharp thorns on the cover. "Guys, Dr. Oliver has a lot of different journals in here. This one," he said, indicating the black one. "It's the diary of Zane, the Silver Space Ranger. And this one," hefting the dark green and pink. "It's Kimberly Hart's diary."

"Dr. Oliver said he had a lot of important stories from the Power Rangers' personal lives," Fran murmured. "I didn't know he had... their journals."

"Well," Theo replied, bringing everyone's attention back to him. "Let's finish this story before we get started on another one, okay?" And he flipped the red leather journal back open and found his place, which he'd marked by the book's blood red ribbon marker. "Let's see... ah.

_"After the hell of weight training, I realized I was woefully out of shape. My arms ached from simple curls, but I wasn't going to complain, not with the Red Ranger smirking at me the way he was. Stuck up, arrogant snob. I'd show him. I could hold my own against him in battle, so I could certainly hold my own in something as trivial and insignificant as school. I'd show him, as soon as we got to our Trig class."_

.

"Can I borrow a pencil?"

I hated to ask. It made me feel stupid. But I had to, because I didn't have a freaking pencil. And without a pencil, I wouldn't get any credit for any of the work done today. Ugh. If the Red Ranger laughed, I'd kill him.

My mother, thankfully, had been kind enough to put me in some classes I'd actually enjoy, such as British Literature and the sewing portion of Home Economics. I'd always wanted to learn how to sew. I mean, I was okay at it, but I'd love to be able to make my own costumes. This intergalactic princess had a violent problem with sleeves. I was tired of my mother's cast-offs from when she was my age. Not that they didn't look much better than what she wore now, but a girl wanted her own clothes.

Now I was in fifth period Trig, and sitting just to the left of the Red Ranger. He was smiling at me again. Where did that dimple keep popping up from? Good grief.

"Sure," he replied. He handed me the one in his hand. It was a black mechanical with a - of course - red grip. It was comfortably warm from his skin. It made me nervous, which made me feel stupid. Why was the after-warmth of a mechanical pencil making my heart flutter? Actually, I knew the answer to that. I needed to relax. I was watching Jason for signs that he was onto me. After all, I was supposed to be a evil spy, and he was supposed to be a pretty smart cookie. What if he knew who I was already? But of course, I was being ridiculous. How would he have figured out my identity already?

I watched him fish a second pencil out of his backpack and click it into action. I stared down at my trig book and pretended he didn't exist. If he didn't exist, he couldn't make me feel stupid about the pencil. Why do I let these kinds of things get to me like this? Huh. Whatever.

The teacher started talking. I gave him a fifth of my attention. Three of those fifths were reserved for other things relevant to being an evil intergalactic princess. And the last fifth... stupid Red Ranger, nagging at me while I'm working on my trig assignment. I was all into my math, carrying during superior subtraction stuff and working through the assessment test like a mad thing, soaking up the numbers, when suddenly a paper ball the size of a pin hit me in the back of the head. I didn't say ow. I was very proud of myself.

"What?" I demanded under my breath, eyeballing the smiling Ranger. I could see his dimple, even from the corner of my eye, and the twinkle in his warm, brown eyes. Irritation reigned like a mad monarch, but I bit my tongue and didn't let it out.

"Wanna go to the youth center with me and the gang after school?"

Huh. The youth center. Interesting. An invite into what was basically their secret sanctum. How did I feel about that? Why did I feel anything about it? Sigh. Confusion was starting to push up through my irritation. Why? I felt happy about the fact that I'd been invited. I never got invited to anything unless it was because I was Rita Repulsa's daughter and not because I was... well... me. Now I had been. So I felt happy.

Bizarre. Stupid Terrans. No way was I gonna grace their stupid youth center with my presence. Just because I'd been invited... well....

"Sure," I said. "Sure, I'll go."

.

.

.

.

**Hope you liked this new chapter. Reviews are cool. Ciao! **


	4. Step Two

**Red As Love and Death**

**.**

**Step Two  
Take a Break For Lunch  
and  
Of Course  
Focus on the Issues of the Present**

.

.

"So much for not gracing the youth center with her presence," Theo murmured, grinning wryly at the dry humor and very teenager-like sarcasm tinging every word of the red leather journal. "I wonder what happened with that."

"Doesn't it say?" Lily asked, confused. "Isn't that the next part in the story?"

"No," Theo replied. "No, it's... it's something else. I mean, there's some stuff about her other seven classes and lunch with the Rangers. Apparently Jason was making her rather uncomfortable with the frequency of his smiles. I'm not reading that part, it sounds like a crappy teen romance novel... like _Twilight_ or some other stupid book. But skipping that part -"

"No!" Fran and Lily cried in unison. "We want to hear about it!"

"Oh, for pity's sake... fine." Theo rolled his eyes, muttering unintelligibly under his breath. Placing one irritated finger upon the soft, vellum page, he found the section that detailed the lunch encounter and began to read. "_As if things didn't suck more than the possibility of undeath or the idea of nuclear fusion, I had lunch with the Red Ranger and his team of lily-white butt-kissing do-good-ers. And, of course, Finster had forgotten to give me either lunch money or a packed lunch. So I was starving, my stomach growling in the most aggravating and disgusting manner, during lunch time while Pinkie, Sunshine Yellow, Green Man, Blue Boy, and the rhythmless Rat Ranger munched away, trying to starve me half to death. And then, of course, _he _had to walk up with a tray heaped with food. I wanted to bite him."_

.

My stomach growled, and I had to fight not to chew off my own arm. I needed food, and soon, or I would turn into Witchy McWitch of the Wasted West. Good grief, I was hungry. And the smell of meatball sub sandwiches and pepparoni pizza with extra cheese was not helping my hunger pangs. I glared at the food, despising it for its scrumptious odors and cheesy appearance. I tensed, ready to get up and leave the lunch table when a white styrofoam tray plopped down in front of me, swiftly followed by two slices of steaming pizza and a bottle of chocolate milk.

"What are you doing?"

"Feeding you," the dark-haired Ranger replied, propping his chin on his fist. I gritted my teeth, violently suppressing the urge to peel my lips back and snarl like a beast. What the heck did that mean, feeding me? What was he trying to say about the way I eat? Was he saying I was too skinny? Did my elbows stick out funny? Were my wrists sharp enough to slice arteries or something? I didn't need feeding... did I? Ugh. Who ever heard of a princess of evil and destruction who asked so many insecure questions of herself just because some guy gave her two slices of pizza attached to an ambiguous comment?

"Why?"

"You don't have a lunch," he replied, shrugging oh so carelessly. As if that was all. Was there sodium pentathol in this pizza or something? Hmmm. I stared at the slice thoughtfully, wondering where this was going. What was the Red Ranger up to? Was he onto me? Was I going to be stuck freaking out about whether or not he was onto me or not the whole time I was undercover?

"So what?"

I couldn't let it go. It was bugging me. Why am I like that? I dunno. I don't care. It bugged me. Guys don't take care of Razielle Zeta. No one takes care of Razielle Zeta - except maybe Finster, Goldar, and Nina. And not since I was my species' equivalent of a nine-year-old. Yet here was my arch-enemy, of all people, buying me lunch, of all things, while I'm at school, of all places. That just didn't make any sense. The world had flipped itself upside down on me, and it was making me distinctly uncomfortable. If I fought with him, I'd probably end up remembering that the boy in the red cybersuit, underneath that adamantine helmet, was the one who had that absolutely charmingly irritating dimple and had been the one to loan me a pencil and who'd bought me lunch on my first day of school.

"So, Miss Zech, you ought to enjoy my hospitality while you have it. You're awfully ungrateful for a poor girl with no lunch money and no lunch."

"You're being awfully nice to a poor girl with no lunch money and no lunch. What's your angle?"

He laughed, and my stomach flipped. He has this way of laughing that made my insides twist in this really frustrating, obnoxious way that was so juvenile and stupid I almost wanted to slice my wrists open to end my self-induced, self-deprecating misery. I ought to bite my thumb at myself, I felt so ridiculously retarded. Stars and stellar beams, I felt like a star-struck mooncalf, half dead to anything but my irritating physical responses to a boyish laugh and a baby's own dimple. Why must I be so stupid all the time?

I ended up eating the pizza. Nothing bizarre happened to me. It was delicious, and the entire time, he smirked at me. I wanted to kick his shins to wipe that smug look off of his face. He wasn't a soldier anymore, not right then. He was a kid - like me.

.

"_But something is happening in the here and now_," Theo read on, his tone changing. Now he sounded almost angry. "_I'm not sure what, but it's time for me to change the way I look now, change the way I show myself to the world. I have the civilian attitude right now, but I can't keep that facade long in the face of battle. Why bother trying_?" The Blue Jungle Ranger blinked and looked at his companions. What on earth was going on? What facade was she talking about? Did Razielle look physically different when in Rachel's shape? How different was the young woman from the intergalactic villain? "_The alarm is sounding, and I can feel the tingling in my fingertips that precedes my transformation from Rachel to Razielle. Even now, despite the lingering taste of Power Ranger on my lips, I am a warrior for the darkness, and I am compelled to fight at my brother's side. Damn you for that, Thrax. If the Overdrive Rangers are in need, I will do my best to keep them alive, even if it means summoning some of the Power Rangers from my own past."_ Theo looked up, looking as if he'd swallowed a live catfish that wriggled all the way down his gullet. In a whisper, he finished, "_It is all I can do for my Red Ranger_."

"Whoa!" Fran cried. "What happened? And who's Thrax?"

"Don't you know?" Casey asked. "Thrax was an enemy of the Overdrive Rangers. They had to call in some of the veterans to take him down, he was so powerful. He's the son of Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd... and...." Realization struck the Red Jungle Ranger hard. "And he's Razielle's half-brother. And that means... that means she's a supervillain. She's still a villain. Because she's fighting with Thrax."

"Now wait a minute," the Yellow Ranger protested, eyes wide. She attempted a fierce glare leveled at both Casey and Theo. "Just because she was working with Thrax doesn't mean she's evil now. I mean, he _is _her brother, after all. They probably grew up together. They might've even been best friends. I mean, at the time that the first Rangers were fighting Rita, Thrax hadn't even been born, so it's no wonder that she hasn't really mentioned him that much until this point. We have no idea what their relationship was or is. And look at what she says - 'I will do my best to keep them alive.' She went into battle to prevent Thrax from killing the Power Rangers, even Rangers she didn't even know, because of her love for Jason. She's not a villain. She's a victim of circumstance."

"Can it, Lily," Theo snapped. "Don't try to turn this into some comedy of errors-"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you!" Lily retorted angrily, gritting her teeth. "It's not a comedy of errors, it's a tragedy. I don't care what you guys say - I feel sorry for the Princess. Think how difficult it is to live the way-"

"Don't try to make excuses for her, okay? That's just ridiculous. That's just-"

"That's really good of you, actually," said the voice of Tommy Oliver, who was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. His long hair, back after so long cropped short, hung loose around his shoulders. "You see into Razielle's mind pretty clearly. More clearly than Jason ever did when he was your age, that's for sure. You're pretty sharp, Yellow Ranger."

"Thanks, Dr. Oliver," Lily said hesitantly. "So... the Princess fought the Overdrive Rangers beside Thrax?"

"Yeah," Tommy said. "Most people don't know it, but Thrax was a humongous problem before the Overdrive Rangers called in some of the veterans from past teams. Being the researcher that I am, I make a point of looking up stuff like this. Anyway, I bet that the first attack is the one you're about to read about. It might be interesting."

"Have you read this journal before?" Theo demanded. "You can quit being all mysterious and just tell us if you have."

Tommy leveled the Blue Jungle Ranger with a chilling look and said icily, "I don't speak to infants who allow their personal prejudices to color their perceptions of possible allies. And I don't need to read the damn journal," he added, biting back any other, more explosive expletives trying to pop out of his mouth. "I lived most of what's written there. I was a major part of the events in that journal. I know what Razielle would say because before she wrote it down, she told it all to me. As for the attacks with Thrax on the Overdrive Rangers, I was there - in an unofficial capacity - helping out, and trying to break through to Razielle, to get her to cease her attacks, to come back to the Power Rangers, to the side of good. I helped repair all the damage she'd done, and so did Rachel Zech."

Theo started in surprise at Tommy's words, and opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to ask a question, but the archaeologist cut him off.

"That's right," the original Green Ranger snapped. He could feel his face burning, and struggled not to lose his temper. This was, still, after almost twelve years, an incredibly sore spot for the researcher. He'd always liked Rachel - Razielle - ever since that day in PE when she'd complained that weight training would give her man-shoulders. It reminded him of Kimberly. It didn't help that the original Pink Ranger had whapped their fearless leader on the arm and informed him that he was being an insensitive jerk and that man shoulders were the bane of feminine existence. Man, Raze had been a great addition to their group, even though they'd tried to keep her out of the Power Ranger loop. She'd been... well. "That's right, Razielle took her civilian form so she could volunteer, help out at the damage zones, give medical help, fix some of the destruction she'd caused. I don't know too many supervillains that do stuff like that, Blue Ranger."

"She is still," Theo snarled, "a villain. Once a villain, always a villain. Jason was a fool to fall for her. A little lovers' spat and she returns to the side of evil like a magnet."

"A lovers' spat?" Tommy sputtered. He'd heard it called many things, but that was most certainly not one of them. "You know what? Chill, man. You're talkin' reckless. We're done here. Keep reading, and we'll see how you feel about it all then, okay? Until then, I'll pop in every now and then, answer some questions."

"I have a question," Fran spoke up, watching Tommy's fists clench and unclench as he attempted to control his irritation. "I just have one question. Well, two. Sort of. Jason and the Princess... they're alive... aren't they?" She felt the color drain from her face at the depressed expression that crossed Tommy's features, at the sorrow that filled his eyes. So the Power Ranger ally was incredibly confused when the paleantology professor nodded before darting out of the room, quicker than a thought. They didn't see him, but he leaned against the wall outside the doorway, letting his head fall back against the cool white plaster, trying to ignore the call of memory.

"What was that all about?" Lily asked softly.

"Who cares?" Theo sniped. "I can't believe him, getting all worked up over one of our enemies! That's just... stupid. Whatever, I don't want to read anymore. Someone else take a turn, okay?"

"Fine," Casey sighed, and took the red leather book out of the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger's hands. He scanned the delicate, flowing handwriting, the obsidian ink etched into the pages, found the place where Theo had left off. He cleared his throat, and, silently hoping that the wry, dry sense of humor that permeated the previous bits of the story - the depressing breakup at the beginning notwithstanding - would bring his spirits back up, he opened his mouth to read.

"_Well, I'm back now. And I am exhausted. Just like in those days, it seems that now, I'm trapped in a state of perpetual tiredness. I wonder what my problem is. Althought I must admit that truthfully, it doesn't matter._

_"I am a vicious monster. This was our first attack on the Overdrive Rangers, and it was bloody. I could hear the children crying, the women screaming. Some teens were trying to help, and I was forced... forced to kill my own soldiers to stop those young people from being hurt. Not only that, but I ended up breaking three fingers and my left arm trying to save a baby trapped in a carseat. Thrax himself attacked me. I easily kicked his butt - after he threw the car on top of me. That was how I broke my arm, trapped under a wheel. But my fingers were broken when the child's mother attacked me with a chair. She didn't believe I was trying to save the infant. She attacked me, and my power - my darkness - got away from me. It wasn't until _he_ showed up that things got any better. And at the same time, they were so much worse._

_"Looking at Jason hurts. It hurt to see him beside the Overdrive Rangers, hurt to feel the bite of his sword lance across my breastplate. It didn't cut me, but I have bruises over my heart from the blows, and a cracked rib. He cut my face with a shot from his pistol, but I clawed his face with my talons. Blow for blow, equal exchange - that's the way it's always been._

_" 'COme back,' he said. 'You're not like this, Razielle,' he told me, and I could imagine the look on his face when he spoke, though he still wore his helmet. 'Don't make me destroy you.' The words hurt, too. Was he capable of destroying me, after what he'd done? After what we'd been?_

_"So we fought. I slashed him, he stabbed at me. We shot at each other, and words flowed between us like blood from an open wound. I think I'm still bleeding. 'Come back,' he said. Come back to what? To who? And why?"_

Casey blinked and looked up, noticing Lily and Fran had tears in their eyes again. He wondered what the original Red Ranger could have said that would illicit such melancholy, such intense depression, in the young princess that she sounded practically suicidal recounting the fight against the Overdrive Rangers. He glanced at Theo, who had a disgusted look on his face. Rolling his eyes and ignoring him, the Red Jungle Ranger looked back at the two girls, who nodded for him to continue.

"_He found me after the battle. He always knew how to find me. I was disguised as a nurse in the pediatrics' ward. I wanted to check on those children, and the little baby. I wanted to make sure my idiot half-brother, to whom I owed so much - too much - hadn't hurt them. I was taking care of a little girl, maybe three or four, putting a gauze bandage around a very bad scrape on her leg, and gifting her with a grape sucker. Then a voice, aching and stabbing at me, called my name."_

.

In the future, things are different. Very different. I am alone. I am in pain. And I miss my friends... and my Red Ranger. I hate my life, but because of honor, I must help my brother in his fight for the Earth. Once the galaxy - and all of its planets - are his, the bloodshed will end. Even I know that, because Thrax is not exactly a tight-fisted sovereign. But I have to make sure that the children, that the people, that everyone - including the Power Rangers - stayed safe from harm.

"Gimme an R," a soft voice, strong, quiet, murmurs from the doorway, and the little girl whose leg I had bandaged gasps, a smile crossing her face. I know without looking who is there. "Gimme an A."

"Run along now," I whisper, and scoot the girl out of the little clinic room. I feel her scurry past me, and I know her eyes are big with wonder as she looks up at the man behind me. I have to suppress almost violently the urge to cover my ears as that voice whispers, "Gimme a Z."

"Shut up," I hiss, and I whirl around to see the original Red Ranger, in all of his handsome power, the dirt and mud and blood still fresh on his uniform. I can see wires exposed where the cyber-body armor has been damaged by the many shots issued by my brother and his minions. His helm, he pops off as soon as I spin around, and I can see his face, his dimple, his smile. He's bleeding from a cut over one eye, but he doesn't seem to notice. "Come here," I say, before I can stop myself. I sit him down on my little bed thing - not being an actual nurse, I don't know what that thing's called - and check out his eye, and the bruise on his cheekbone. His skin is warm under my fingertips.

"Still have an excellent bedside manner," he whispers, and there is a wealth of affection in his voice, a positive treasure trove. I want to hit him. How dare he speak to me like this? Why is he here? To torture me?

"You need stitches on that cut," I say. "And your cheekbone is cracked."

"Your brother has a good eye. He always hits his target."

"No he doesn't," I say. "If he did, you'd be dead." When I say this, he grabs my hand, which was previously occupied cleaning out the cut. I go still. His thumb is right over my pulse. That's a bad habit of his. He tries to guage my pulse by doing that, so he can figure out how I really feel behind all my masks. I can't let him do that. He can't know how much he's hurting me, or I've lost this battle, this war. I jerk my hand out of his grip.

"Would you care if I was dead? Would you give a damn if Thrax had killed me?" He demands. I look him straight in the eye, and I can see he's trying to needle me, hurt me, make my cry. Break me. So I say the most vicious, monstrous thing I can think of.

"No."

Yes. Oh, gods, yes.

But I stitch up his eyebrow, one stitch, and numb his cheek. It takes maybe five minutes. Then I walk out. I can't be in the same room with him. I'd rather die than show him what he's doing to me just by being here with me. I have to run. I have to get out of this room before I suffocate. I can smell him, and his breath is warm against my arm. So I turn and walk. The door is inches - miles - away, when he calls my name.

"Don't go, Raze," he whispers. "Don't go. You don't have to do this."

"Next time you get in my brother's way, I won't stop him from killing you. You're not my responsibility anymore, Jason."

I deserve an Oscar for that performance. Instead, I get to cry in my room in Thrax's stronghold like a teenage girl who's been hurt too much. And that is no kind of half-assed reward.

I just want to go home. But I have none.

.

Casey closed the journal, and looked at the others.

"We need a break," he told them softly. "We can't keep reading."

"Okay," Lily whispered. She could barely speak past the lump in her throat. "Okay, guys. Let's get out of here."

.

.

.

**Hope you liked this new chapter. This fic has three storylines intertwining, and I've just introduced the second one. I hope you enjoy it. Reviews are cool. Ciao! **


	5. Step Three

**Step Three**

**Establish Myself as a Friendless Terran Teenager**

**Complete with Nerdage, Bullying, and Detention-ed Defenders**

.

.

" '_I'm back now,' _" Casey read when the group had returned to the library.

Lily and Fran cuddled next to each other on the sofa, and tears still rolled down the Yellow Jungle Ranger's cheeks as they waited for the Red Ranger to continue from where they'd left off. Unable to bear the heaviness in her chest as they'd read about the aftermath of Thrax's attack, the female Ranger had requested a break from the reading. But now she couldn't bear not knowing if the Princess Razielle managed to remind herself of the good times and pull her spirit out of the pit of despair she seemed to have fallen into.

" '_I'm much calmer_,' " the Red Ranger continued, much to Lily's relief. _" 'I just needed to take a shower. I love showers – it's like the world doesn't exist once you pull that curtain closed. Which makes it even more freaking annoying when you've finally managed to relax and the water's pounding you like a massage but without the freaky fat guy in a loin cloth putting his hands on you, and then someone pounds on the door and reminds you that you're supposedly using up all the hot water._

" '_Whatever. Thrax can get his own shower.' "_

At this, despite the tears on their faces and in their eyes, the two girls choked out twin laughs. Even the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger snorted with mirth. Casey grinned. The Princess sounded a little more like her usual witty, sharp, sarcastic self. Mentally crossing his fingers in the hopes that her mood would continue, fearing the outcome of her projective empathy if her depression returned, he went on.

" '_ cannot believe that I have to share a bathroom with my half-brother. Seriously, at my age. I really ought to move out of Thrax's stronghold and get my own place on some deserted moon on the fringes of the galaxy somewhere. That would be nice. No Thrax to recruit me, no mother to guilt trip me, no Jason to make me want to brain myself with a rock._

" '_But that's not the point of this entry. I need to get back to telling my story, which leaves off at Jason's invitation to hang out with him and the other goody-goody Power Rangers at Ernie's Juice Bar after school. Although I have to ask myself ... do I really want to think about Jason now? Because of course once I get going, I'm not going to be able to stop myself from thinking all about my Red Ranger... and missing him... and wishing things were different... that he'd never left me... that we weren't fighting on opposite sides in a war that eventually will kill us both... and I really don't want to do that to myself.' "_

Casey cleared his throat, scruffed his hair. Already, things were beginning to get serious. Already, the Red Jungle Fury Ranger's chest was beginning to tighten with the grief that the Princess's empathic powers foisted on him. Hopefully, things would get a lot more cheerful in the near future/past. Swallowing his increasing depression, the young man continued reading.

" _'Do I?_

" 'A_pparently I do, because I find my brain sliding back ten years to when I first decided to walk into Ernie's Juice Bar and get my very first strawberry cream and cherry milkshake.' _"

.

I should have known better than to get roped into the whole trip to Ernie's Gym and Juice Bar, aka the Youth Center. What was I thinking? I was supposed to be this super smart, intergalactic, nefarious princess with a super-scheme, and because of my curiosity, I accepted an invitation to the hang-out of those goody-goody Power Rangers. Never mind that I had places to go, like home, and things to do, like homework. Never mind that my parents might not catch on that I only went because I was trying to spy and sneak my way into their inner sanctum – mentally and teenager-ly speaking, that is. If my parents caught me – or Nina's boyfriend, that backstabbing, gold-plated pinhead from the darkest side of Hades – and reacted without thinking, which was likely, I would be so grounded, not to mention hospitalized. Yeah, like I said, what was I thinking?

Unfortunately, I know the answer to that: the Red Ranger. I had to be sure about him. I had to make absolutely certain that he wasn't leading me into a trap. What if he knew that Rachel Zech was really Razielle Zeta, royal villain after the blood of Terra's team of teenage defenders? Was that the reason he'd invited me to go with them? And was that why he was paying so much attention to me? I had to double check.

Did I know I was most likely screwing myself over in the battle department? Yeah, part of me knew it. But my curiosity dragged me forward.

After my Trigonometry class, and let's not forget that blush-inducing mechanical pencil incident that would one day – hopefully – lead to me beating the crap out of Jason on the battlefield as payback for my humiliation, I was at my locker, trying not to get smashed into by the Terran teenagers swarming the halls, desperate to escape the high school cage. Now, as an evil princess from another planet, you'd think my problems would be huge, important issues, or at least some little, but still somewhat important, issues. You know, things like which planets have warrants out for my arrest, who tried to assassinate me last week, or what little black dress am I going to wear to the annual Universal Villains' Late-Night Christmas Party. But on this particular occasion, my issue was more pressing, but of a lesser impact on the universe.

I couldn't get my locker open.

The padlock wouldn't unbolt or unscrew or whatever it was that locks like that did so the loopy part would pop open. Banging it against the door didn't work. Screaming at it didn't work either. I was seriously contemplating either bursting into tears – first days of school are stressful and depression-inducing, not to mention I looked like the Super Nerd Queen from Planet Loserface – or blasting it with my laser pistol and totally blowing my cover, when a very large and shiny bicep crossed my field of vision barely a half-millimeter in front of my nose and a familiar hand grabbed my locker lock and gave it a series of several sharp twists. With a whizzing noise, it popped open.

Of course, you know who it was. Of course you do.

"Thanks," I muttered to Mr. Ridiculous in Red, doing my best to avoid his gaze. My neck prickled. I could suddenly feel every drop of cold sweat rolling down my forehead. Did he know who I was? Was he just screwing with me? Or what? "I hate padlocks," I added.

"Yeah, they can be kind of a pain," he said. His voice rumbled with a chuckle that made my heart skip and my fists clench with the urge to deck him. I cursed my teenage hormones and the fact that cute guys could be buttheads. Why couldn't the hotties be evil villains like me? All the hot guys were either gay, married, dead, good guys, or had girlfriends. The rare handful that didn't fall into any of those categories were homicidal maniacs with no interest in girls except as sources of chopped up body parts or something equally as freaky.

"Thanks," I said again to Jason, unsure what else could come out of my mouth. With shaking hands, I got my books and stuffed them into my bag. School was harder than I remembered it. Had I been this jumpy when infiltrating the Collegium on Eltar? I didn't think so. Was it that the only person I'd really needed to worry about back then was Zordon, and not a team of five kick-butt kids ready to beat me to a bloody pulp if I was discovered? And why was I so worried about this blowing up in my face? I wasn't sure. Maybe because this was the first mission I'd ever had where the important stuff all hinged on me, on what I did, on whether or not I pulled through. Maybe the stress from that was why I had no real interest in being a supervillain like my parents, all psyched up to go destroy solar systems. It was just too stressful.

Of course, standing next to Jason was stressful, too. As in, "I can't breathe because all the oxygen is running away in fear of his cologne" kind of stress. The kind of stress that is only happening because my parents put me in classes with the Power Rangers and the other kids are the Dimbos from Planet Dumb-Nuts, so the only intelligent, attractive guys that I've been able to be around in the last ten thousand years are the Ex-Pet, the Red Rat, Captain Blue Nerd, and the Rhythmless Rat. And unfortunately, the Green Goon had the hots for the Pink Ranger, Blue Boy was attached to Trini at the hip, and Zack was drooling over some chick who treated him like absolute trash. The only available guy in school, it seemed, was Jason, and I'd been single a long, long time.

Great. My hormones were now the enemy.

"So, you ready to head over to Ernie's?"

My heart jumped into my throat, strangling me. I sucked in air and shook my head before I had time to think about what I was doing. My mouth popped open, and someone with my voice spoke.

"I can't today," I said. My mental brakes screeched, trying to stop my mouth, but we hit a patch of black ice and it didn't work. Good. I needed to get home, get my mind right. "I forgot that I have chores. My mom's gonna want me home. Sorry. I totally spaced on it. Maybe next week, okay?" The first day of school, after all, was a Friday, and I didn't want to waste my Saturday at some stupid juice bar when I could be out with Nina blowing stuff up. Sunday, the youth center was closed, so the earliest we could hit the place was Monday.

I crossed my fingers on the inside, where the Red Man couldn't see, and waited for his answer.

"Well," he said, shouldering his backpack. I wondered randomly if the nylon straps irritated the skin not covered by his red muscle shirt. "That sucks. You're missin' out. Sure you can't call your mom and ask permission? Maybe she'll let you off the leash a little bit."

His eyes were twinkling. How do brown eyes twinkle? It made no sense to me. I always thought you had to have blue or violet eyes for them to twinkle like that. And his dimple was back, the one he got when he showed off his half-smile. No one that old should have a dimple. It just wasn't fair. Good grief, no wonder my mom wouldn't let me fight them when they weren't morphed. If I had to look at their faces, I'd probably hyperventilate and forget what I was doing there in the first place.

"I don't think she will," I fibbed. "She's pretty strict. Europe warped her sense of parental responsibility," I added, slamming my locker shut.

Then, realizing he'd copied my movements, I glanced over and discovered to my sudden horror, that his locker was the one occupying the space beside mine. On his other side was the Blue Nerd and the Yellow Ranger. Scanning more of the hallway, I saw Miss Pinkie and the Green Goon directly across from me and Jason, and two lockers down from them, the Black Ranger. We were all in a tiny cluster. The only ones in that space who weren't Rangers was me, and this humongous guy in a leather jacket and what appeared to be his skinny-punk lackey/friend.

"Hey, it's the new kid," the skinny punk said, and the big guy looked my way. I sighed, replacing the lock on my locker door. It was the end of school, and I was tired. My feet hurt. If I was gonna have to put up with stupid Terrans or any other kind of fighting, it was not going to be until tomorrow at the earliest. So when the two losers walked up to me, I let my head hit the metal door and snapped, "If you're here to hassle me, save your breath. I'm tired."

Before I had a chance to look at them and gauge a reaction, a hand the size of a boar's head slammed into my back, knocking the wind out of me. My face smashed into the locker door. The slatted vent ripped a gash in my forehead. With a cry, I thrashed free of that boar hand and turned towards my attacker, wiping the blood out of my eyes in time to see the huge lummox in the leather jacket get a side-kick to the gut from the Red Ranger. The fat guy reeled back and tripped over the bent over Blue Ranger, which knocked my assailant into the industrial-sized garbage can. He was up in an instant, roaring mad.

"Hey, Bulk, come over here, pick on someone your own size," the Black Ranger called, doing a fancy step and dodging the other kid's mad rush. Kimberly cried, "Whoops!" And tripped him. The Green Ranger finished him off by landing a solid kick to the back of the guy's buttocks and forcing him to head-butt the locker, stunning him. He sank down to the ground, and his little lackey ran over, calling his name and fanning his face.

"Oh, my gosh, Rachel!" I glanced up to see Trini coming towards me, her face full of concern. "Come on, we should get you to the nurse," she said, but Blue Boy informed her that the Nurse's Station was closed after school let out. "Oh, well, I guess... um...."

"Here," Jason said, pulling a red bandanna out of his pocket. He gently pulled my hand away from the gash and applied the cloth, trying to staunch the bleeding. "Bet that stings, huh?"

"I've had worse," I said dumbly. I was still in shock. Had the Rangers really just teamed up and beat up a guy who'd attacked me? I didn't think the Goody-Goodies had it in them. "What was up with that guy?" I asked to change to subject. Ridiculous-In-Red was cradling the back of my head with one hand, and I couldn't stop the shivers running up and down my spine. No tripping them this time. Not to mention, I was cold. The air conditioning blasted down on me, icy cold and gelling my sweat to my body. And the attack... the attack had left me shaken. It was too much like the attack that had led to me being sent to Sythar. Images of sterile white rooms, beeping machines, blank-eyed nurses, the stench of disinfectant... it rose up and swamped me, and to my shame and horror, I started crying like a little kid.

"Whoa!" Jason cried, and put an arm around me. "Hey, don't cry. Bulk probably didn't mean to hurt you like that. He's always messing with people, but he's rarely a real jerk like that. When he wakes up, he'll probably feel like dirt. Don't cry, Rachel." The leader of the Rangers kept pressure on my cut while he half-hugged me.

"Oh, it's just stress," Kim said sympathetically, rubbing my back. Why were they all being so nice to me? "First day of school always sucks, huh? Hey, Tommy's got a first-aid kit in his car, let's go out there and patch you up, okay, Rach? Then we'll head over to the Youth Center. Ernie might give you a free smoothie."

I could only nod and sniffle, wiping at my face. A free smoothie or whatever sounded just freaking dandy right then. I felt ridiculous. Why was I crying? What if my parents saw me? What would they think? It didn't make sense that being shoved by some idiot would make me bawl like a baby, but here I was, drenching Jason's muscle shirt with my ocular salt water. At least he was being a good sport about it. So far, I hadn't heard any complaints about wet clothes, and we were almost to the front doors of the school when Mrs. Appleby stopped us.

"What happened here?" My teacher asked.

"Rachel just got a small cut on her forehead, Mrs. Appleby," Jason said. "The Nurse Station is closed, but Tommy has a first-aid kit in his car, so we were going to get it and take care of her. You know we're all Red Cross Certified."

.

" '_There was only one problem with Red's explanation_,' " Casey read. His heart no longer trudged in its rhythm in his chest, but was now pounding with anger. He'd met the infamous Bulk and Skull, who worked for Dr. Oliver. How could Dr. Oliver employ such creeps? They'd hurt Razielle to the point that she'd bled. Did they think that was okay? The Red Jungle Fury Ranger knew that Dr. Oliver didn't think that kind of thing was okay, and yet he'd hired the two punks despite this. Perhaps they'd made reparations for their behavior. But still... what a couple of obnoxious bullies.

"What was the problem?" Theo asked, almost against his will.

The Red Ranger jumped. He'd gotten so wrapped up in his anger, he'd forgotten he was supposed to be reading out of the journal. Maybe he ought to switch off with someone else after the end of this segment. Clearing his throat, he went on, " '_There was only one problem with Red's explanation. I_ _had a black eye, although only a little one, from the impact with the padlock on my locker, and my nose was starting to swell. I actually looked like I'd been in a fight, or gotten beat up. And apparently, Mrs. Appleby thought so, too._

_" 'The lecture she delivered about being a juvenile delinquent practically scalded me. At several points, all the Rangers tried to interrupt, to explain what was going on, to stop her, but she just talked over them. Finally, Jason blew up in her face. Told her that it wasn't fair – what does he know about fair? – that I get bullied, and then get in trouble for it. She gave him a detention for yelling at a teacher and being defiant. When she finally left, Red had more in common with a tomato, complexion-wise, than was probably healthy. I just started crying again like a limp dishrag. What happened to my backbone, anyway?' "_

Casey folded down the page and massaged his temples. Jeez. What a lousy teacher. Casey was glad he had never had any teachers like that.

"What a psycho," Lily snarled, shredding a tissue. "I can't believe she would assume that Razielle had been fighting when she was with the Rangers. I mean... they were like, model students. And like... the Blue Ranger, Billy. He was always getting messed with, before he became a Ranger. How could that teacher think Billy would hang out with someone who picked fights for no reason?"

"Mrs. Appleby was having a rough day," Dr. Oliver said from the doorway. The four teens glanced up to see him holding a couple of pizza boxes, which he waltzed into the library and set down on the table before slouching into one of the easy chairs. "First day of school and all that. She actually apologized to Razielle a couple of weeks later. And don't forget, most of what you're feeling right now is being influenced by Razielle's empathic abilities. She didn't like Mrs. Appleby until Senior Year was almost over because of this. Anyway, I figured you guys might be hungry. You've been here a couple of hours."

"Really?" Theo asked.

"Yeah. So, if you want, I can read while you guys eat. How's that sound?"

Apparently, it sounded good, because all four teens lunged for the boxes as Dr. Oliver caught the hastily tossed journal. As the hungry Rangers and their ally wolfed down the pizza, Tommy ran his hands over the red leather cover of the journal, casting his thoughts back into the past, back to when this journal had been brand new, and the pages blank. Back when he'd answered his cell phone at two in the morning, and a sobbing girl had been on the other end, begging him not to hang up, begging him to let her in. He remembered when he'd opened the door and seen Razielle standing in the pouring rain, wet and ice cold and miserable, sobbing as she ran and threw herself into his arms, crying and crying, the only coherent thing coming out of her mouth being, "He's gone, he's gone, he's gone...."

"Dr. Oliver?" Fran asked suddenly, frowning. He'd looked so far away, suddenly, and the pain in his eyes was a blistering, burning grief that scalded anyone who saw it. "Are you all right?"

"What? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I should be reading, huh? Okay, where were we? Oh, yeah. _'Apparently, if you just finished bleeding and you're a friend of Jason's or Kimberly's or any of the others, Ernie – the guy in charge of Ernie's Gym and Juice Bar – will give you a free milkshake, the good kind, made with real ice cream. I wanted one of those. So we ended up in the Youth Center, seated around a table, all of us sucking up creamy milkshake through these fat, crazy straws that were all different colors. Mine was purple. And somehow, against my will, it seemed like these Terrans who'd kicked butt for me and taken me to get a milkshake were starting to grow on me. I was starting to like them._

" '_And I was plotting to kill them. Jeez.' "_

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** so, I'm debating. Do you guys want a super-long romance full of the usual teeny-bopper-ness, like in _Twilight_, or do you want to hurry up and get to some super-action, like a first kiss or something? It's up to my fans, really. Because I'm a huge fan of the fluff and cute-ness, but I also love the intimacy, passion, and the "ooooohhhhhhhhh... you're killing me!" hot stuff. So again, do we wanna hurry and get to like, a first date or something? Or is the pace fine for you right now?


	6. Back to the Future Two

**Red as Love and Death**

.

**Back To the Future - Two**

**Scarlet and Screaming**

.

"_I'm bleeding again,_" Tommy read aloud, doing his utmost to focus exclusively on the hastily scribbled words in the journal. The black ink bled onto the page, as if Razielle had stabbed the paper with her pen in her intense drive to record her pain. _"I've never seen as much blood as I have tonight, and now here's some more to add to the balance. I had to stop writing when the alarm sounded, when my brother summoned me to his side to begin the fight anew. When my name hissed out of the intercom speaker, when my half-brother informed me that we would be fighting the Overdrive Rangers once again, it took all I had to keep the pieces of my soul from flying out into space, never to return. Instead, this broken princess kept her eyes focused intently on the blood red orb that served our home planet as moon, and tried desperately not to think of who might die."_

The ex-Black Dino Thunder Ranger glanced up from the snow white pages with their stark black lines and scanned the faces of the four teenagers seated around him.

Casey looked pensive, his eyes full of dark thoughts that Dr. Oliver knew he would refuse to share, no matter how often he was prompted. This story, the story of Razielle and Jason, was a painful one because the younger, newer Rangers seemed to think that nothing too horrible could happen to any of them. Tommy knew this wasn't true – look at what he himself had done to Kimberly, twisting and tormenting her while he'd been the evil Green Ranger so that she'd nearly gone insane. And now the Red Jungle Fury Ranger was learning this brutal truth for himself. There was a new knowledge in his eyes – the knowledge of what love, and pain, and lust can be used to do... and what it could undo.

Theo, that upstart Blue Ranger with an attitude problem and too many brain cells for his own good, looked uncomfortable. The ex-Black Ranger had to force his mouth not to stretch into a gloating smirk. Little Brat Blue was as easy to read as a children's picture book. The guilt at his unfair condemnation of the Princess was beginning to eat at him. He could feel her pain, knew it was genuine. That pain lanced the heart, left you hunched and gasping for air, desperate for relief. Theo was beginning to see that for himself.

As for the girls....

Lily sobbed quietly into Fran's shoulder. Tommy didn't blame her. The waves of anguish and rage pouring off of the diary were enough to drive a saint to suicide. His only defense against the constant empathic assault was that he knew the ending. He, and only he, out of this entire group, knew the end to the story of the Red Morphing Ranger and the Princess Razielle Zeta. Despite the pain and brutality and uncertainty, he knew exactly where Raze and Jason both were now. But that didn't make the reading of the journal easy. The older man could only glance away from the weeping Yellow Jungle Ranger and return to his place in the journal. He had to struggle to read the words – liquid had smeared many of the letters.

_"This blood that stains my bedroom floor, this blood that is making a trail from my bed to my shower, the one place where I might find peace, is not all mine. I am drenched with the blood of a thousand innocents. How many of those bleeding people died?_

"_How many people have I killed tonight? And where is __Jason__?"_

.

Where is Jason?

This is the question plaguing my mind as I sneak and slink with Thrax and his minions through the cities of Terra, intent on ignoring the flash of my half-brother's wet blade. My knife doesn't leave its sheath, but I am no fool. I know that the blood of the two families stains my hands so wet and red, no amount of scrubbing will make them clean again. In the night, a pregnant mother is cut down without so much as a cry – only a liquid grunt deep in her throat as blood sprays the wall. Two feet away from where I stand, a boy gurgles in his own blood, choking, drowning in red. Red. My curse. Red.

Jason... pull me out of this nightmare.

I'm a monster. I know that. I've never needed anyone to tell me. But this is one of those times when I loathe myself for being a coward as well.

For my Red Ranger, I ought to have tried to stop Thrax from killing. I would have lost my own life, but isn't that what heroes do? They sacrifice themselves for the good of others. They lay down their lives so that others may live in their place. But I'm not a hero. I never have been. I'm only a coward. And all around me, innocent civilians die.

Damn you, Thrax.

Morality has never been my strong suit. As I trudge through blood three inches thick, pooling on the bright, blindingly white carpet, I remind myself of this and wonder how much further my brother can push me before I leave him. Thank goodness, there are no young children here, among the dead and dying. Only those old enough to fight, old enough to join the ranks of the Rangers if asked... but still so young. When I look too closely at these bleeding teenagers, I see the faces of the ones I loved a long time ago.... Kimberly, working as a sniper somewhere out there in a world of violence all too familiar. Tommy, back in the field as a Ranger ally, even though his Ranger powers have long ago disappeared. Billy, exiled to another planet to keep from wasting away to dust in a matter of moments. Zack, a depressed drunk trapped in an abusive relationship with Angela the Psychopath. Trini, who never deserved anything so sickening, murdered by a drunk driver while walking to her weekly Yoga class. And Jason....

I can see their faces on the broken bodies of the dead. My heart tries to break my ribs, but I won't let it. I refuse to acknowledge my heart's existence. Instead, I stare fixedly at my brother's back.

"Are we there yet?" I demand, trying for the monotone of boredom.

"Patience, Razielle," my brother tells me.

For some inexplicable reason, a sudden thrill of fear kisses up my spine, and I shudder. Patience has never been my strong suit, but all of a sudden, I realize that I could wait an eternity to get to wherever it is my brother is trying to take me. Dread oozes through my skin to grip my internal organs. Fear chews at my brain stem. In my mind's eye, all that can be seen suddenly is dark eyes hidden behind a black visor. Cold seeps into my limbs.

_Jason__...._

_._

"She's an effing _psychopath_!!" Theo roared, leaping to his feet.

Fran and Lily jumped, surprised. The lull of Dr. Oliver's voice, the cadence of the words, and the soft despair of the writing had gathered them up, rocking them into a state of strange sleepiness that overtook them too slowly to notice, lethargy filling their limbs and pulling at their eyelids. Only the knife-sharp need to know the outcome of this attack upon the Overdrive Rangers and the probable meeting between the Princess and the Red Morphing Ranger had kept the two of them from falling asleep. Now the two lethargic girls stared up in utter shock at Theo, hearts pounding almost in unison as the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger ranted at Tommy. Never had the Blue Ranger even alluded to a profane word of any kind, even the tamer sort, much less practically roared the F-word at an older, senior Ranger. What had gotten into him?

"Dude," Casey cried in a shocked voice. When she glanced at him, the Yellow Ranger saw a strange, nervous fear in the back of the Red Ranger's gaze. Was he picking up the vibe that she was suddenly getting off of Theo as well? Perhaps the Princess's empathic powers were becoming too much for Theo to handle. Maybe they ought to –

"Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?" The ex-Black Dino Thunder Ranger demanded. His eyes narrowed dangerously at the Blue Ranger, and Theo suddenly found his voice catching in his throat. This man in front of him was supposed to be a legend among the Power Rangers. He'd been called to serve more than four times in his life, even as an adult, which was practically unheard of. Now that same legendary Ranger was eyeballing the young man with a menacing, piercing look that practically froze his marrow. Did the young man really want to take on Doctor Thomas Oliver, the leading expert on the Power Rangers, and one of the most respected martial artists in the universe?

Probably not.

"I'm sorry," Theo said apologetically. "I don't know what came over me."

"I do," Tommy said, this time in a gentler voice. The edge of darkness faded from the depths of his eyes. "Razielle thinks of herself as a monster. She hates herself, wishes she were dead even, but because of three promises made in her lifetime, she can't commit suicide. All of her self-hatred, self-deprecation, and her suppressed grief and rage are all being channeled into this journal. You're feeling everything she's feeling – including her hatred for herself for not saving those people."

"Like she should have! She should've done something," Theo snapped half-heartedly, but the fire was gone. The spark of rage that had prompted him to call Princess Razielle a psycho had quickly been snuffed out of existence by the ex-Green Morphing Ranger's gaze.

"She needed Jason," Tommy replied. "You seem to be under the impression that Raze was a dominant personality. But in truth, she and Jason became so absorbed in each other that they couldn't really function anywhere near their original capacity once they separated. Jason actually made a mistake – regarding his personal welfare – when he broke up with Razielle, but he also knew that it was what was best for her."

"Maybe she's just obsessed. Maybe they both are," the Red Ranger interjected.

"Most psychologists would probably say so," the ex-Green Morphing Ranger agreed with a slight nod to Casey, who actually looked shocked that his conjecture held weight. "But," Tommy continued. "Here's the difference between Princess Razielle and most people her age. For one, they're all dead by the time they get that old – except Zordon. Two, the ones who aren't dead (aka Zordon) are adults. She isn't. She's still a teenager for her species. The type of attachment teenagers form isn't rational. Unfortunately for her kind, their bodies – and thus their hormones – are those of teenagers. The way they reach decisions is incredibly similar to the way adolescent Terrans think."

"Yeah," Fran murmured, staring hard at the floor. "We're never rational. And then add our irrationality to the way we handle dating. Half the girls in the world think the guy they're with is the one they're going to marry, and that's after only a few weeks sometimes. Razielle was with Jason for, it seemed like, years." The Ranger ally glanced at current narrator for the tale, who nodded. "He was probably her whole world because she had to throw away her entire background and support system in order to be with him and now he's gone and she's suddenly thrust into a situation no teen should have to deal with. I mean, if you look at the Rangers, most of you guys are teens shoved into adult situations. I mean, they expect you to save the world, for crying out loud. And then the Princess is pushed back into a lifestyle she thought she'd left behind forever that she was never comfortable in to begin with. That's gotta suck."

Casey, Theo, and Lily exchanged a shocked glance. They'd never thought of themselves that way, as teens in an adult situation. Closing his eyes against the headache beginning to pulse right behind the bridge of his nose, the Blue Jungle Fury Ranger nodded to Tommy, who knew the boy wanted him to keep reading.

_"Eventually, the Overdrive Rangers find us. And this time, it's worse than just __Jason__. Flanking my __Red Ranger__ is __Adam__, my favorite __Black Ranger__, and of all people... __Kim__. My ex-best friend, and my ex-boyfriend. The night couldn't possibly get worse.... _

"_But then again, it can always get worse_."

.

Blood drips down my forehead into my eyes as I watch the two Rangers trying to flank me with wary eyes. My right arm hangs useless at my side. The air burns my lungs. And still, still Kimberly and Adam circle me, blaster and dagger drawn, the visor on Adam's helmet down and Kim's mask up. The chill between the Pink Ninja Ranger, the Green Turbo Ranger, and myself freezes the air around me and turns my blood to ice. But I can't look away from the burning eyes of the Ninja Ranger.

"Kim – " I say, but the words that slash out of her mouth through her mask cut me to the bone.

"Don't try to play nice to me now, Razielle," the Pink Ninja Ranger snarls. I actually step back, fighting the burning in my eyes and the ice in my veins. "You killed innocent people. Any friendship we had is gone. I'm done with you."

"You're just another enemy now," Adam snaps. "So prepare to fight."

I can't fight them. I just can't. But somehow, my bastard sword is in my hand, the blade shining like a polished mirror. I raise it as Kim takes her fighting stance, as Adam raises his blaster. The moon, fat and white and just as dead and cold as the night that Jason stabbed me in the chest, reflects off my mirror bright blade. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a black visor framed by a red helmet turn in my direction. I can't stop myself from glancing at the Red Morphing Ranger as my brother leaps to stab him in the back, as Kim throws her blade and Adam shoots a bright emerald energy blast aimed straight at my heart, as Billy – what is he doing here? – lunges for Thrax.

"Look out!"

My voice, Jason's voice… I don't know. But the blade sinks into my shoulder, into Jason's back hilt-deep to the kidney. Billy's thrown backwards into Cestria by a swing of Thrax's Power Sword. The blast slams into my sternum.

My heart stops. My breath dies.

"Sister!" Thrax, my brother. His voice burns with anguish and hate. He hasn't called me sister since he was a little boy. I feel the thunder of his voice through my chest.

"Adam, you weren't supposed to hit her in the chest!" So Kim, at least, doesn't hate me. But Adam… did the ex-Green Turbo Ranger want me dead for real? Or had he aimed a little too well? But none of the Rangers would murder another person….

"Billy!" The strange, lilting sing-song of the Aquitian woman stabs me deeper than Kim's knife.

"Raze! No!"

The sound of that voice crying my name hurts. But he cares. He actually gives a flying frack about me. My heart thumps once, twice, and begins to pound. I can breathe again. But before I can get up, before I can go to him, help him, make sure he's all right, Thrax is by my side. One arm lifts me up. Kim's knife is stuck in my shoulder. My half-brother holds me to his chest and shoots a spray of energy blasts at the Rangers, keeping them back. I'm trying to suck in air as my brother roars at his enemies.

"Next time, Rangers! Next time!"

And we're gone.

Is Jason alive? Is he all right? I don't know.

.

"_I'm going to go crawl into the shower and relax. Hopefully I'm not going to bleed to death or pass out. But I have to hide from the world now. I can't deal with what I'm trying to figure out right now. I need to clean off, sleep, and heal. But after that…._" Dr. Oliver trailed off and struggled to regain his composure. He'd been the one to patch up Jason after that battle, and the whole time, as the Red Ranger phased in and out of consciousness, the only word to pass Jason's lips was, "Razielle." And Kim… hours of crying had decimated both the ex-White Ninja Ranger and the ex-Pink Ninja Ranger as Kimberly Hart wept because she was certain that blaster shot to the chest had killed the Princess.

"Doctor O?" Casey murmured softly, calling the ex-Black Dino Ranger back to the present.

"Sorry. Anyway, where was I? Oh, here. '_But after that… I have to find Jason. He has to be alive, and what if he… what if he… I can't even contemplate what that cry means. What will he do? What will I do? I don't know, and I'm too tired to think. So for now, I'm going to the shower. I'll write more later_." Dr. Oliver looked at Fran, Casey, Lily, and Theo and read the last sentence. "_I have to go now._"

.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** just so we're clear, Razielle is not supposed to be a heroine or a good guy. She's the main character, and she's flawed, and she's messed up, and she's done seriously bad things. I will never deny that she's done awful stuff. But love is blind, and that's part of what I'm trying to convey here.


	7. Step Four, pt 1

**Step Four**

**Attack on Three Fronts**

**Detention, Tutoring, and the First Slip-Up**

**(Did I Mention the Dance Team?)**

**Part 1**

.

.

Things had finally calmed down. Fran and Lily had managed to stop crying. Casey no longer looked as if he hated his very own guts simply because he wore red, and Theo didn't have the nearly irrepressible urge to smash all of the furniture in the library into splinters. It had helped that a mission had called the three Rangers and the rest of their team away, leaving Fran to collect herself and giving the others something else to think about for a bit.

It also allowed Dr. Oliver to peruse the leather journey with the thorny red rose embossed on the cover - Kim's journal. The ink, now darkened with age to a deep violet, burned into the page - and into Tommy's eyes and brain - all the brutal things he had done to the Pink Morphing Ranger when he had been under Rita's spell. Surprisingly, the way Kimberly wrote about the ex-Green Ranger made him feel a little better. The fact that the ex-Pink Ninja Ranger didn't hate his guts with the heat of a thousand suns still filled Dr. Oliver with a peculiar sort of warmth.

Now they were discussing the second-to-latest entry, the one before the evil princess's recounting of the battle with the Rangers. More to avoid contention than anything else, the four teens and the researcher discussed Razielle's admission that she was beginning to like the Power Rangers.

"So she's starting to like them," Theo said, sounding puzzled. He scratched his head, confusion swimming across his features. "That was fast. Doesn't it normally take longer for villains to become good? Zen Aku took almost a year, didn't he?"

Dr. O shrugged his shoulders.

"You guys gotta remember," the ex-Black Dino Thunder Ranger reminded them. "Razielle was a teenager who grew up with a supervillain mom and no non-evil influences. Not only that, but you also have to keep in mind that the attack that sent her to the infirmary planet seriously traumatized her. When she cut her face again after being shoved, it brought on a series of emotional flashbacks. Razielle has always been phobic about cutting her face since her attack. She was upset and unable, due to the nature of her mission, to do anything to retaliate. While she did practice martial arts, it wasn't with any seriousness and her power levels, physically, weren't much to contend with. It was only in her villain form that she was a force to be reckoned with. And then the very people who are her enemies not only take down her attacker, but treat her wounds and take her out for a milkshake. Any teenager would like people who did that for them."

The Yellow and Red Rangers looked thoughtful. The Blue Ranger's face, an open book, still showed his skepticism. But the older ex-Ranger kept his eyes on Lily's face. Despite the physical differences, there was something about her expressions that reminded him of Trini.

The very idea made something hot and sharp bite deep into Tommy's chest. For one frantic instant, the electric beam of blinding headlights filled his vision, the shriek of tearing metal filling his ears. He shut his eyes against the sight, closed his mind. With a visible effort, he dragged himself back to the present.

"She's lonely," Fran whispered. Her voice, tight and hoarse, trembled. "It's in every line, every word. There's pain, and it's not just from Jason." She turned her tear-bright eyes on the other Ranger ally. "Did she have any friends besides this Nina? And who was she?"

"It always amazes me that Razielle's old and dear friend Nina is actually the dreaded and demented Scorpina, Rita Repulsa's second best general and the wife of Goldar."

"The flying monkey in armor?" Theo's voice practically vibrated with scorn and incredulity. "Wow, he had a wife? That's different."

"Rita and Zedd were married," Tommy reminded him. "Anyway, do you guys wanna hear the rest of this or not?"

"But did Razielle have any friends other than Scorpina?" Fran demanded, wringing her hands until the skin around her thin wrists flared bright crimson. "I mean, what kind of a life is that for a girl? _**Everyone**_ has friends. Even Bulk and Skull had each other. So... did she really have no support at all? Just this Nina? Whom I doubt, by the way, would have approved of her princess's relationship with Jason."

Tommy nodded.

"Pretty much, until she was a teenager, it was Razielle all by herself. She had her uncle Rito, who was close enough in mindset that they got along for the most part. There were a few cousins, and her two older half-brothers from her father's previous marriage, but those visits were few and far between. Until the six of us came along, that was really it. Hang on a sec," said the older man, scanning the hastily scribbled, blood-sprinkled pages in front of his nose. A weary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "This is about her dance tryouts and other things. Happier things. Do you want me to read them?"

He glanced up at Theo and Casey, already sensing the girls' answer. The Blue and Red Rangers nodded once, almost in unison. It was almost as if they'd rehearsed it.

" _'I'm back. I finally figured out how to angle the water so I could write in here. The water is ice cold. Shards of liquid ice stab my legs, but the cold air and the even colder water soothe the burn on my sternum and breasts. Luckily, I had worn plate armor to the battle. I wonder if the cyber-armor of the Power Rangers had helped __Jason__or__Billy__at all. Deflected that knife in the__Red Ranger's__back, perhaps...._

" _'The blisters on my skin are fat and ugly and dead looking. Disturbingly, I have the intense and almost irresistible urge to pop them all, but that's the easiest way to catch an infection from my wounds. Not to mention, it would hurt like blue fire. Instead, I let the frigid shower ease the pain and write in my journal. Some of my words will be distorted by stray water droplets, but that's all right. I'll go back over them later, make sure they're legible. I need to escape, to sink into my happier memories. My shoulder burns. The wound gapes open like some sort of hungry mouth, dribbling blood onto my skin. The water around me flows pink and red and cloudy towards the drain. Blood is not so easily washed away as some people think. Only memories can hide the crimson staining my skin._

" _'Happy memories, like that second week of school. The bus ride, which was an experience in and of itself, and class with the Rangers, and the tryouts in the middle of that purgatorial week. As boring as the information my brain was being bombarded with was, I had a lot to look forward to._

" _'Trig was one of those things. Trig, and my second opportunity to infiltrate those goody-goody Power Rangers.' _"

.

By Thursday of the next week, I had finally remembered to bring a freaking mechanical pencil. Actually, in my defense, I'd remembered on Tuesday, but somehow I'd managed to lose my only pencil during the passing period between lunch and Trigonometry, so I'd had to borrow one from Jason.

Again.

But this time, I had him.

It. Had it.

And him. I had them both. Ha.

You know how a lot of super villains in movies and on television and stuff have these great, epic, sweeping lines that just knock the socks off of all of you normal people? And everyone's like, "Oooh! How did they get to be so evil?" And it's so super impressive?

I'm not one of those super villains.

We were getting our assessments back (boo! hiss!) finally, since somehow Mrs. Appleby had failed to get them graded by Tuesday. Probably too busy holding up a Frito truck due to menopausal stress. Or she drowned in a vat of vanilla-flavored pig lard. No, in case anyone has noticed, I do not like my Trigonometry teacher. Ask me why. Go on, go ahead, ask. You'll never guess the answer.

She gave me after school detention for two months for "fighting" and "causing a disturbance." My job? Tutoring any unfortunates unable to pass muster in my math class. Not that I was any great shakes at this sort of thing, but somehow, I'd smacked face-first into this fate. Hopefully, it would prove useful.

"How did you do?"

I glanced over my shoulder, hiding behind several strands of frizzy feeler so that my expression was slightly hazy. Behind me, the Crimson Crusader leaned his cleft chin on one hand and leaned toward my seat. I might have been intimidated if the white and - was that pink? - plaid shirt hadn't covered his massive, Arnold-Schwarzenegger-style biceps. The crimson and ebony bandanna tied cowboy-fashion around his neck, the knot a few inches beneath his bobbing Adam's apple, didn't help him. As it was, he looked like a stereotypical redneck. How did I know what a redneck was? I Googled it. This invention known as the World Wide Web would be the downfall of Terran civilization. But the rather nauseating image of Mr. Ridiculous in Red as a redneck made it pretty easy to keep my rampaging teenage hormones to myself.

Instead of actually answering, I tried to play it cool by simply shrugging. For one thing, I didn't have my test yet. How in the heck was I supposed to know how I'd done? And for another, I couldn't seem to make my throat work. Don't ask me, because I don't know why. But those big brown peepers were staring intently into my face and my cheeks were on fire. Since there weren't any fire extinguishers on hand, there was only one thing for it. No talking. If I opened my mouth, the flames would probably spread to my tongue and I'd do something stupid under the delirious spell of my agony. You know, like spill my guts.

It was something I'd had to deal with all weekend and most of this week. After the sort-of rescue from the Bulky Butt-munching Brain-Fart from Planet Pig, a bizarre and incredibly frustrating sense of guilt began gnawing on my internal organs around the area of my esophagus. Having heart burn and a potential ulcer weren't potential side effects of this mission that I'd considered before. That and my breeding-hormones coming fully online. Argh!

Jason's eyes still scorched my face. The fire raced from my cheeks into my brain. I could hear gray matter sizzling in my skull. Were the roots of my hair smoldering? Did anyone see my follicles smoking? Jeez, I hoped not.

A sheet of paper hit my face like a slap. A corner of the page managed to slice the corner of my mouth. I immediately tasted blood and froze. My face....

"Rachel?"

Deep bass rumbled through my sinuses like thunder. The sound shook some of the panic gripping my brain loose. With a doggy-style full-body shake, I tried to wrench myself away from a night a couple years before, where I ran down an alley, my teleporter sizzling in a puddle somewhere far away, footsteps pounding like hell behind me. Pain sang through my cheeks, through the scar pulling at my face, a phantom of old fears and night terrors. I could feel the edges of my school desk biting into my fingers. My eyes were wide open, but darkness pressed around me, shot through with burnt sienna glows from street lamps.

My legs jerked and spasmed, trying to run. But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere, and I was trapped by wood and steel and plastic all around me. Icy air seared my lungs. My breath fogged the night. Knuckles cracked audibly and painfully as the pressure against my desk forced the bones to grind like tectonic plates. Mist clung to my face, or was that only sweat? It was summer in Angel Grove. Why was I so cold? Goosebumps ripped through my skin, mountains of chill on my flesh. Frigid pain sank its teeth into my joints.

A bell screamed, shattering the nightmare. I blinked, shuddered. The classroom. Mrs. Appleby's classroom, my Trigonometry class. With wide eyes, I saw everyone jumping to their feet, rushing out into the halls as the pudgy teacher tried to call them all to order. What was going on? What had I missed?

"Rachel?"

Someone snapped their fingers in front of my face. I shrieked and jumped nearly out of my skin. When my eyes registered Jason's concerned face, I nearly cried. My legs shook, my hands shook, my chin shook. Tears were an imminent threat. I couldn't... couldn't let myself... all over a stupid cut.... Struggling to regain my composure, I refused to even look his way. I knew what would happen if I did. For some bizarre reason, composure was the furthest thing from my mind around this irritating Terran. My eyes remained locked on the frizzy feelers in front of my face.

"Hey... you okay?" The Red Ranger's voice held a faint touch of laughter, as if he wasn't sure if I were pretending to be as deranged as I probably really was. When I didn't answer him, he added, voice more serious, "Rachel? Talk to me. What's goin' on?"

"Nothing," I replied, gathering up my books. With a single slip of a few pages, I sliced several layers of skin open over my knuckles. Fire raced through my fingers.

Stupid rule against backpacks. I could've just grabbed my purple and black backpack and run out of here long ago if I'd had it, but instead I was forced to carry my books. My scarred and bleeding hands shook as I rounded up my four mechanical pencils. Hastily sinking teeth into my lip, I clenched my fists.

"Well, I... uh...." Jason trailed off, and despite my ever-present directive, I didn't try to help him continue. Suddenly, I could barely think, I was so tired. "How'd you do on your test?" He finally asked. It was obvious he was trying to make small talk.

More to shut him up than anything else, I glanced at the paper. At the bleeding red letters, I froze in place, shocked. There was absolutely no way... that was just impossible. Math was one of my better subjects. Yet somehow, my placement test had managed to get marked with a humongous, obnoxious D. If I remembered my studies of the Terran education systems correctly, that was the second-worst grade possible.

I slapped the paper into the Scarlet Sissy's open hands. One knife-fine edge sliced my palm. There was nothing I could do to stop the scream of frustration from escaping my mouth. I hated being clumsy. My clumsiness resulted in paper cuts, and paper cuts freaked me out.

"Whoa, chill out!"

"Shut up! That hurt, and-" I sputtered into silence and sucked on my cuts, alternating between my bleeding palm and bleeding knuckles. A sigh forced its way out of me. I hadn't meant to yell. The flashback to that night on the Planet of the Oceans - one of the few worlds my parents had no interest in conquering - when I'd been attacked in the floating capital... the memory still scorched my mind. It hurt to even breathe in this crowded prison of concrete and steel and glass. I had to get out of here.

Rough calluses landed on my shoulder. My muscles locked. My breath stuck in my throat, cut my mouth and lungs. The heat from the Red Ranger's skin burned me through my sleeve. Boys were always so warm....

"If you need to talk, I'm here. Here's my number."

He put a slip of paper in my suddenly limp hand. The edges crinkled when I moved my fingers at all or flexed my palm. I could see crimson slashes, almost like blood, against the whiteness and the blue lines like veins. Without a word, his thick fingers curled mine around the slip of paper. His palm cradled my bleeding knuckles. I was certain the blood from my palm would stain the tiny scrap he'd written his phone number on. The ruby drops on my knuckles would smear crimson on his hand. Still, I didn't care. My heart held itself suspended in my chest, waiting... waiting.

"If you want to talk, gimme a call," Jason added in a deceptively calm voice. Brown eyes smoldered in his face. I couldn't even nod. After what seemed like a million years, he released my hand and left me in the Trig classroom, staring after him like a lost puppy, unsure as to what had just happened.

.

" _'Of course, if anyone is reading this they're probably wondering how that could be a happy memory. I'm not sure I can adequately explain it,'_ " Dr. Oliver continued, then flicked a glance at the kids. Theo looked confused, Casey satisfied, and Fran and Lily eager. So far, this entry hadn't inspired any of the suicidal impulses from earlier, or the severe depression. Good. The Ranger ally wanted to avoid all that if at all possible. He continued, " _'It was my first real interaction with__Jason__. __Yes, I bit his head off and then spat it out and stuffed it up his...._' " Tommy trailed off, skipping over the crude language with a gentle _ahem._ " _'And yeah, it was rather tense. But that was all right.'_ "

Tommy suddenly remembered his own first, personal, one-on-one encounter with Razielle. It had been later in the day. For all the classes he'd shared with the strange, new girl, Kim and/or Trini had kept her in their grasp. It was only after school, as he was heading out to his green Volvo, that he'd run into her by accident as she pulled a pale lilac duffel bag out of a two-tone, black and iridescent purple and blue, '82 Corvette.

"_Going somewhere?_" He remembered asking her. When she jumped, the crown of her head collided with the metal doorframe.

"_Ow_!" This exclamation had been followed by several curse words, though these were tempered by random expletives, such as _dragonflies, crumpets__, _and _fudge muffins!_ Feeling bad, he'd escorted her to the gymnasium for dance team tryouts. He hadn't even noticed her bleeding hands.

_" 'Did I call __Jason__ that night? Not on your life. What kind of pathetic piece of pitiful-ness do you think I am? Besides, I was too exhausted after tryouts. Those dance team auditions aren't exactly a walk in the park. More like a marathon run through the park. Sometimes it amazed me that I could dance so well, but I couldn't do anything else. I can't run for more than a solid minute without suffering respiratory failure or tripping over myself. I'm no fighter. But dancing... I can do a can-can a show girl would envy. Tryouts proved I was a wimp... but it also proved I had potential._

_" 'Tryouts... another happy memory.' "_

.

In my ten thousand years of cryogenic stasis in the space dumpster, courtesy of Floating Head Guy From Hell, I had lost most of my limberality. No, that's not really a word, but it works. I could touch the tops of my feet, right beneath my ankles, but before being wrongfully imprisoned in the Intergalactic Trash Bin, I'd been able to put my palms flat to the floor without feeling any sort of burn. Surrounded by the Airheads from Planet Blonde - and Princess Pinky Pie - the sad fact of my inflexibility reminded me that I was in truth an intergalactic princess from the dark side who was having too easy a time of impersonating a transvestite hippopotamus.

No longer did the Crab Walk call me master. The Bridge... I couldn't cross it. _Pointe_? I'd never gotten it. Shuffle, ball, change? I kicked myself in the ankle. Almost immediately, this little grayish blue spot exploded beneath my skin. High kicks? Arabesques? Cheer leading moves? Beyond my reach, all of them.

After each failure, I forced my eyes away from the Perky Princess Club from Bitch Land. Some of the Varsity cheerleaders tittered behind their lotionized hands and perfectly manicured fingernails. Oddly enough, Miss Pretty in Pink didn't join in. Probably because I was accidentally-on-purpose looking.

"All right, Miss...?" The dance teacher scanned his clipboard, which I knew held my name somewhere in its grasp.

"Zech. Rachel Zech."

"Miss Zech. Why did you want to join the Dance Team?"

Why did I want to join the dance team? Staring at the shiny white spot on top of the bald man's head, several answers popped into my brain. Because I loved to dance. Because Kimberly was on the team and I needed to spy on her. Because I hated being in this hellhole with all of these stupid Terrans who didn't know spit about anything worth knowing and I couldn't stay here without something to make my life bearable. Because I loved to dance. But I was so out of shape. What would these people say if I told them the truth? Sorry, can't pass muster just yet, I'm still not limbered up from extended vacation inside a space dumpster. Yeah, that'd go over big.

"I want to learn," was all I said.

"Learn what?"

How to be the girl turned into a swan, or a dying fairy or some other pretty and graceful thing in a ballet. How to do a kick-line, which I'd seen while spying on Terran television stations. A woman named Liza Minelli impressed me a lot. She did this radically innovative dance with a chair and a bowler hat.

"Learn to dance."

"Well, maybe this isn't really for you," the teacher, Mr. Johnson, told me. His face pinched up in a half-wince, and I saw his eyes drop to the rolls of fat hanging over the waistband of my pants. Varsity witches giggled behind me. I realized he was telling me I was too... fat. Too out of shape and too fat. Then his ice cold eyes slid up my body to my face, and then to my hair, which looked like a ball of static carpet fuzz. Bushy white eyebrows shot up into the air. He didn't like my hair, either, or my face.

"Can I audition?" I demanded, locking my eyes with his. I hoped they looked like acid. "We haven't gotten to the actual dancing part."

"Well, if you can't do these simple moves-"

"I'm recovering from an extended hospital stay," I snarled, hoping my mother was eavesdropping on this conversation so Uncle Finster could supply the proper paperwork. Trying not to fidget - a sign of a lie, to some people - I added, "I need to get back in shape. Give me a month. The season doesn't start until September, anyway. But I have a dance you might like to see before you kick me out of here."

There was a flash of black from the corner of my eye. Adam Park, a boy in my History class, with curly black hair and a talent for funny voices, had his video camera rolling. Great. He was filming the auditions for the school news show. If I screwed up, everyone would see it. Ice flooded my face.

"Fine, let's see it," Mr. Johnson snapped, waving one hand impatiently.

When my music clicked on and I'd shimmied out of my shoes and jacket, I put my head down and sighed. I had to wait. Dance, I had learned, was all about timing. Wait too little or too long, and you missed the rhythm of the moves and ruined the whole thing. And with every song, there was an intro, a series of notes and beats before the singer began to tell you the meaning of the music. For those moments, the song belonged to you. It was all about what you wanted it to be about. It reflected what it pulled from your heart, your soul.

In this case, it was about ten seconds of silence, followed by a wind blowing, calling across emptiness. Then... her voice. Their voices. The duet known as t.A.T.u. For Terrans, I was impressed with them. Friday, in my room, I'd used our computers to research popular music for Terrans, partly for my disguise and partly to help me with the auditions that I knew I would take part in. Though t.A.T.u. wasn't exactly popular, the style fit with what I wanted.

Danger hummed across my skin, and I threw myself forward, into the music, running away from the world, slamming into it, a madwoman waltzing on a battlefield surrounded by heat and metal and death. Burning acid heat flooded my body. Pain raced through my veins, but I ignored it. Hands dancing on the air, head slamming, body jerking and spinning and tumbling like a marionette - I danced in front of these people as if I would die.

Later, Adam gave me a copy of the tape. I was surprised at how I looked. When I danced, there was no real conscious thought - it was all muscle memory. So the expression on my face surprised me. There was so much pain and hope there, and I'd had no idea....

The audition ended with me crumpling into a heap as if I'd been murdered, my throat cut and my life gone. Eyes wide, I lay with my head down, sweat dripping from my face, plastering my hair to my forehead. I gasped for breath. Lungs burned, heart pounded, ribs and calves and shoulders ached. But it was out, all of it, the rage and the hate and the fear....

"You'd better be up to standard when practice starts mid-August, or I'm gonna cut you. No second chances."

That was all Mr. Johnson said to me. But it was enough. I limped out of the gym smiling, even though I was freezing in my sweat-soaked leotard and tights. Adam waved at me. Somehow, my arm managed to raise itself in a half-wave, though my shoulder burned. A hot shower would be in order when I got home.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** this is a two-parter because if I made it a one-shot chapter, it'd be almost 10,000 words long. That's too long since most of the other chapters are about 5-6,000 words. So... yeah. Reviews? I like to show that, while Razielle is a supervillain, she is a teenager with the same sorts of problems teenagers have. And I also like showing that you don't have to be skinny to be a good dancer.


	8. Step Four, pt 2

**Step Four**

**Attack on Three Fronts**

**Detention, Tutoring, and the First Slip-Up**

**(Did I Mention the Dance Team?)**

**Part 2**

.

.

" _'Friday morning, I got hit in the face with a mess bigger than the Second Eltaran Civil War. __T-Rex Face__came up to me as I hobbled to my locker. My ankles hated my guts. I knew that while I slept they were plotting my imminent demise via shoelaces and some broken glass. But even the worry over this nefarious and mysterious scheme paled to nothing when I nearly ran face-first into a set of sweaty pectorals and abs. The reek nearly choked me. _

_" 'Sweaty boy, yum. _

_" 'Not.' _"

At this, Fran and Lily busted up laughing. How often had they managed to run into Casey right after he'd gotten out of the gym, still dripping salt water all over the place and stinking to high heaven? Compared to the roiling clouds of noxiousness coming from the Red Jungle Fury Ranger's pits, a middle school boys' locker room smelled like a field of roses and sweet pea blossoms. Both girls could easily sympathize with the foul-smelling plight of the Princess Razielle.

"That's not funny!" Casey cried, crossing his arms over his chest. He glared a thousand needle-sharp daggers at the Yellow Ranger and Fran. "Girls like a sweaty guy. It shows them we know how to work it."

"Yeah, okay," Lily muttered, rolling her eyes.

"Actually," the ex-Black Dino Ranger interrupted, "according to this, Razielle had a mixed reaction to Jason's sweat. Personally, I hate that sweaty-sock-flavored-corn-chip smell, but females have always baffled me."

"I thought she was starting to like the Power Rangers, though," Theo stated.

"She is. Trust me. Do you want me to continue?"

"Yeah!" The younger Ranger ally leaned forward, propping her chin in one cupped hand, her elbow digging into her knee. Rough denim pressed into her skin. Maybe she'd have to get different jeans. Something softer. But that wasn't important right now. Shaking the thoughts of her potential shopping endeavors from her mind, Fran nodded her head for Dr. O to continue.

Lily mimicked her. Casey sighed, and Theo didn't even look at them. He was staring with dilated pupils at the lamp hanging over their heads.

" _'I have to say, while some primeval, sick and twisted part of my teen-hormonal brain was swinging from some mental chandelier, screeching like a cat in heat at the sight of the __Burgundy Butt-face's__sweaty muscles, the rest of me was desperately attempting to force the bile rising in my throat back to the dark bowels from whence it came. He stank. I'll say it right now, that boy needed a shower more than my stepfather needed a wake-up call. It was positively frightening.'_ "

.

"Rachel!"

I blinked, momentarily blinded by the strike of fluorescent light against sweaty arms. Shaking my head, I focused on the Red Ranger's equally sweaty, shiny face. Dark eyes pinned me, melting the soles of my shoes to the tile in an instant. I couldn't have moved for an earthquake. Trying to stop my own eyes from popping out of their sockets - the main force behind my success being my glasses - I tried to focus on something else, anything. I ended up watching the Perspiration Channel. Today's feature - a bead of sweat rolling from Jason's hairline, between his eyes, to the tip of his nose.

Ew.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"Hey, Mrs. Appleby sent me to tell you that you're not a math tutor anymore," the Crimson Crusader informed me, wiping his forehead with one of his bright red wristbands. So long, Perspiration Channel. Time to watch the Nose Bridge Network. Anything but his eyes or that dimple. I could see the cursed thing winking at me from his cheek by the corner of his mouth. Ho, crap, don't look at that either. Remember, Razielle, you're still a teenage girl. Don't underestimate the power of hormones.

"Great," I couldn't help but mutter. She hadn't said I didn't have detention, just that I wasn't a math tutor anymore. So what was my new punishment? I bet he was going to tell me. Hmmm. "Was that all?" The waspishness just popped up on its own, I swear.

"She said you have to go to after-school tutoring."

"What!?" Me? Tutoring? No. No, that was impossible. Argh! Tutoring!? I'd get her. I'd get that fat flying cow if it was the last thing I did. I'd kick her fat ass into the middle of the next century!

"Yep. Until you can manage a B or better on the assessment test."

I snarled. I growled. I raged. The only thing I didn't do was kick the lockers. I was wearing black Vans, and they're not very thick. Kicking metal, even the cruddy aluminum containers, would break some of my toes. I couldn't believe this, though! Detention! Tutoring! Oooh, that Terran wretch was gonna pay! I'd send Putties after her! I'd have Mom's monsters smash her car. No, her house! Grrr....

The Scarlet Stoner from Stupid-Street was still talking. What did he want? To gloat? I'd give him a good kick right in the....

"I'm gonna be your tutor," Jason said, and I managed to trip over my own two feet and hit the ground like a pillowcase full of bricks. No mean feat, considering I hadn't even been walking at the time. This intergalactic supervillain stared up at the Red Ranger for what seemed like a thousand years, then I managed to sputter, "W-what?"

"I'm supposed to tutor you in Trig."

I'd died and gone to heaven. No, I'd died and gone to hell. Well, I'd freaking died, at least. Suddenly, my mission goal flashed before my eyes. Huh. Wasn't it supposed to be my whole life doing the flashing? Great, I was being flashed by an intangible concept. Even better, this whole event had left me about as tipsy as my Uncle Rito after a night at an Eltaran bar.

_Okay, __Raze__, _I thought to myself._ Gotta suck it up. Gotta be cool. Don't show him how excited you are. Don't show him this is a good thing. Be cool, girl. Relax and be cool. Yeah. Cool._

"I hate that woman!" I roared.

Picture, if you will, the tall and tough Red Morphing Ranger, the Scarlet Sissy himself, jumping like a frightened cat at the sound of my shout. Picture also what I looked like - me, with my frizzed out witch hair and my silver-rimmed glasses, my black tunic-dress and black pants and purple jacket, frumptastic as a forty-year-old trailer-trash housewife, looking a tad crazy with my thick, black scab over one eye.

And I'd managed to freak out the Crimson Creep.

Bonus.

"It's not that big of a deal," the Red Ranger informed me, but I was saved the trouble of contradicting His Royal Redness by Little Nerd Blue's interruption of, "What's not that big of a deal?"

"Yeah," the Rat Ranger added, coming up on Jason's left. "What's up? And why's Rachel on the floor?" Zack reached for me, but I ignored him. I didn't want help getting up. I felt stupid for being on the ground in the first place.

"I tripped," I muttered, getting to my feet. When my conspiring ankles shouted for glee and began twisting out from under me, strong arms caught me as I fell. On the one side, the ex-Pet Ranger. On the other... my eyes were ensnared by Jason's smoldering gaze. I tried to swallow but suddenly it was all I could do to breathe and blink at the same time.

Great.

"Over her own feet," Jason added, and my own foot managed to find his own shin. Score point for Evil Intergalactic Princess.

.

Lily and Fran were having hysterics. Casey couldn't keep the grin off his face, and even Theo had difficulty not smiling.

Tommy kept his smile on the inside. That had been a good day. Once the trouble, the first trouble, with Jason and Razielle had started, the ex-Green Ranger had gone through all of his journal entries - all the Rangers had written in journals, kept under tight lock and key, for posterity's sake, once they had become Power Rangers - and scanned his notations on the woman he'd discovered to be the daughter of their enemy. Shock had hit him smack in the face when he realized how much fun he and the other Rangers had had with Razielle.

One of those fun, carefree, happy days had been the second week of school, when the girl known as Rachel Zech had kicked the Red Morphing Ranger right in the shin. Jason hopping up and down on one foot had made him laugh. When Razielle did it too, whimpering that she'd stubbed her toe... he'd cracked up.

"Settle down," Tommy told the two giggling girls, and then found his spot on the page. " _'The shower is helping. I don't feel half so woozy anymore. I know __Thrax__ puts something in the water, because not only has the bleeding stopped, but my wounds don't even hurt anymore. I'd be concerned except that my vision is sharp and clear, my hands and feet have full feeling, and sleepiness has yet to attempt knocking at my door. Someone else, however, is. Hold on..........' "_

Tommy saw a million ellipses to indicate a period of waiting. Apparently, Razielle had gone to check on her caller, because the next words were,_ " 'Stupid __Thrax__._

_" 'I don't hate my backstabbing brother, despite his backstabbing ways. He didn't realize what he was doing, I know that. __Thrax__ had no idea that if he'd killed __Jason__, then __Thrax__ himself was as good as dead. I love my brother more than life... but not more than __the Red Morphing Ranger__. And my brother stabbed my __Red Ranger__ in the back._

_" 'I still don't know if __Red__ is alive. I've been in this shower for almost an hour, just trying to wash away the blood, the memories, the fear. Sinking into my happier memories is helping. But when I leave my little haven, after I sleep, this intergalactic princess of the dark side will do everything in her power to find out if __the Red Morphing Ranger__ lives or not. Unless __Thrax__ knows. I'll ask him first, save myself some trouble. But until then, I want to try to relax. I want to remember the old days. Like tutoring with __Jason__. That first day... I'd died and gone to heaven. Or maybe I'd died and gone to hell. I still can't decide which. The day was so... intense._

_" 'If you've ever seen someone dance the tango, you'll know that there's a moment - generally several - when your entire being is focused on the possibility of a touch. You suck in a breath, your body taut and still, your eyes wide in your face. Every nerve is alive with tension. The waiting is killing you. Your heart begins to race, then to pound, then to hammer in your chest. You can't catch your breath. It's like being scared, but it's different. Better._

_" 'Now, if you have ever actually _**done**_ the tango, you'll also know that after this moment is over, your entire body is exhausted and you just want to crawl under a rock and die so you never have to move again. That's how drained and empty those tense, still moments of "almost" leave you._

_" 'Tutoring was like _that_.'_ "

.

I dragged my feet. My backpack weighed a million and ten pounds and the overhead lights hit my eyes, sending shards of pain through my eyes and down my back. Tension burned inside my muscles, hurting more than I'd thought. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the Dance Team tryouts and my legs and all the rest of me were still killing me. And of course, being evil and nefarious, my karma had already swirled down the frothy waters of the Intergalactic Commode of Good and Evil and instead of getting to go home and take a deliciously scalding shower and ease my pain, I had to go to tutoring.

With Jason Lee Scott.

Heaven help me.

The door was right there. All I had to do was walk through it. It was less than ten steps. Even in my stiff, sore state, the distance would be easy for me. But I couldn't do it. For some reason, my body was oxygen deprived. Even though my mouth gaped open - my tongue felt like it lolled like a dog's - and I practically panted, I couldn't catch my breath. My head hurt. Everything felt hot and sharp and surreal.

I didn't want to go in there. Up until now, I'd yet to be alone with the Red Ranger. It was so easy to pretend to be mousy, moronic, mundane Rachel Zech while surrounded by all these idiotic Terran teenagers. But when it was just me and the Crimson Creep... I'd be screwed. He'd see through me in a second. I was as deep as a puddle on hot asphalt in August. I was as opaque as an open window. There was no chance I could hide the truth from him. He was too sharp. He was the freakin' leader of the freakin' Power Rangers! The headman for the Ultimate Source of Fluffy Duckies and Cute Kittens in the Universe! You didn't get there by being a complete moron. Surely....

_Oh, shut up and suck it up!_ My internal voice, for some terrifying and obscure reason, sounded a lot like my mother right then. _You have a mission. Get on with it! Wimp!_

Sucking in as deep a breath as my pathetic, wimpy lungs could manage in my state of self-doubt and sheer panic, I strode purposefully up to the door and opened it.

Okay, maybe I didn't stride purposefully to the door. Maybe I shuffled my feet and trudged like a half-asleep zombie up to the door, glancing left and right for witnesses. Maybe I just thought really hard about striding purposefully. Maybe I didn't even think that hard about it. Maybe I just thought about how nice it would be if I tripped and knocked myself out on the door knob so I wouldn't have to go to tutoring.

I won't tell if you won't.

"What took you so long, Razielle?"

I jumped a foot in the air and jerked my head around to stare at the Scarlet Sissy and the Blue Brainiac sitting at one of the long tables in the tutoring room. It was actually the AP Chem classroom. Whose genius idea was it to put a bunch of low-IQ juvenile delinquents in a room attached to a cache of toxic and highly flammable chemicals? Terrans needed to be taken over before they killed themselves with sheer idiocy.

But the Red Rat had said my real name. Or was I so on edge I was hearing things?

"W-w-what did you say?" I managed to stutter. Great. This covert thing was killing me. Espionage hurt my brain. There had to be something better than this for me. Bomb squad, maybe. Demolition derby. I don't know, something else!

"Um... what took you so long, Rachel?" Jason repeated, slowly, as if my elevator didn't go all the way to the top floor. Blood rushed into my head.

_Sarcasm, _I thought to myself, _the weapon of choice for women of the cruelty persuasion._

"Um... maybe the fact that I actually have a life, unlike _you_ dorks," I retorted, my voice practically dripping with something acidic and Day-Glo green. As soon as the word "dork" was out of my mouth, however, I cringed. One, not a good way to make friends. This tutoring thing had me way on edge. Two, dork? Seriously? That was the best I could come up with? I deserved failure. Ultimate failure.

Mr. Scarlet Stick-Up-My-Butt opened his mouth to say something, but I got there first.

"Sorry," I said, shoving as much sincerity as possible into my voice. For a moment I nearly choked on the sugary sweetness. "I'm having... a wretched day. Wretch-tastic. Wretch-able. Wretch-alous. Wretchy. And all those other words with 'wretch' in them. I didn't mean to take it out on you," yeah, I so did, because I hate people talking to me like I'm stupid but that's a secret. "I'll be nice. I promise. But I thought _you_ were my tutor?"

Make small talk. Good idea. Why was Billy here? If I feigned confusion, Tank T-Rex over there might tell me. Because I needed this one-on-one time with the Red Monster in order for my plan to work.

_Ha, __Red Monster__. I should tell my mother about that_, I thought. _Maybe she could make a monster - or rather, __Uncle Fin__ could make a monster - just for __Jason__. Maybe it would take him out and I wouldn't have to do this anymore._

I'll be honest - I hated high school. I hated my classes, I hated the morons I was surrounded by, and I hated my teachers. Luckily, I didn't have to do homework because my mother had my Uncle Fin the All-Knowing Alchemist do it for me. A simple illusion spell made his handwriting look like mine. Yeah, it was cheating. I had bigger fish to fry - like ensnare the Crimson Crusader in my clutches.

My chest experienced a random spasm at the thought. Guilt? Crud. Yeah, I felt guilty. The Rangers were being nice to me. They liked me - when I wasn't being Razielle the Super Witch. Kim had already invited me to dinner and a study-party with Trini and a girl named Aisha at her house tonight, for crying out loud. Of course, I'd accepted. But now I felt guilty about... everything. Always with the guilt.

Jeez.

"What seems to be the origin of the contention?"

Speak English, please, Blue Boy.

"What Billy's trying to say is: what's wrong?" The Red Ranger asked.

I sighed and plunked my fifty-pound backpack on the long table with a _thunk!_ next to the empty stool which had obviously been reserved for me. Thunking myself down on the seat, I dropped my head onto the table, wishing I had aspirin, or sunglasses. My eyeballs were on fire. There's not a lot of light in a crater on the moon. And there sure ain't a lot of light inside a space dumpster. Not to mention the whole cryogenic stasis thing. And on the hospital planet that had tried and failed to fix my face, when my head was wrapped in bandages I didn't get a lot of UV exposure to my peepers then either. So these hideous fluorescent lights and the blinding late summer sun of California were frying my ocular organs in their sockets. And the resulting headache made me want to confess to being... well... myself, just so I could go home and sleep it off.

"Are you experiencing cranial discomfort?" Nerd Brain asked sympathetically. I didn't have a dictionary on hand, but I was pretty sure he was asking if I had a headache. Somehow, my head managed to scrunch itself on my neck in a sort of nod. How was I supposed to do tutoring like this?

I heard the sound of pen on paper, but didn't look up. The light tried to break in on the darkness within my folded arms, but it failed miserably. Score for me. Someone - Buddy Blue or Red Butler*, I didn't know which - ripped a sheet of paper out of a notebook. Something else tore. A stool screeched on cheap linoleum tiles, making me wince. After about thirty seconds the lights went out, except a single patch that easily illuminated half the room. I saw this from peeking out under my arm. As soon as the lights flicked off, my head came up. Jason dropped two white pills in front of me.

"What's that?" I demanded, uncertain. Sodium pentathol? Veritaserum? Some other kind of horrible truth inducing thingy? Jeez, I was giving myself an ulcer with all this worrying.

My eyelid twitched.

Holy crap.

"Acetaminophen," the Blue Ranger told me.

My mind raced. Click of information. Acetaminophen was the generic, non-aspirin pain killer used in most industrialized countries on Terra. Safe and harmless. Tasted awful, worked wonders. Working up a mouthful of spit so I could dry-swallow them, I popped the two pills in my mouth and gulped them down. And then a bottle of strawberry kiwi flavored water popped up in front of me. My eyes found the Red Ranger, who nodded to the bottle. He might as well have built a neon sign reading _Drink it._

If this stuff was drugged, my mother would ground me for eternity.

"Looks like your hypothesis was correct, Jason," Billy told the other guy, getting to his feet. "But the medication should prove most effective. If the pain doesn't dissipate in sixty minutes, give her one more and ensure Rachel stays hydrated. That might be the source of the discomfort."

Speaking of hydration... when was the last time I'd drunk any water?

As soon as the thought managed to get absorbed into my thought-listening-thing in my brain, my throat went dry. It hurt to swallow. My eyes turned to giant balls of sand. Itchy sand, with ants in it. I no longer had a tongue, just a hunk of beef jerky I could use to possibly form words sitting in my mouth. All the spit inside me evaporated.

Without a word or even a sound, I wrenched the cap of the bottle and started guzzling. Holy crap, I was thirsty.

When I burped and swallowed at the same time, I nearly choked, so I put the bottle down and focused on not drowning in strawberry-kiwi Canada Dry. This stuff was good. Even better, it didn't turn my throat to dust and it didn't have any calories or sugar so I wasn't going to be a giant dancing hippo when practice started.

Um... well... yeah, I was. But it wouldn't be because I chugged a bunch of sugary crap. I was just a hippo.

After practicing breathing for about ten minutes, I realized my eyes weren't balls of itchy, antsy sand and my head didn't feel like a deep-space nuclear explosion. That stuff worked. I looked around to thank the Blue Ranger, but he was gone. So that was why Billy had been here. Jason had somehow known... but how? The headache had been building all day, but it had only become obvious and unbearable when...

When I walked into Trig. Of course. The Red Morphing Ranger not only gave me an eye twitch and an ulcer, but a migraine, too. Yippee. Oh, well.

After the headache had been beaten into a pulp vaguely resembling a slight pressure on my temples, I drank the rest of the Canada Dry. Jason popped another one in front of me, this one tropical punch flavored. Oooh... I liked punch. Without a word, I popped the beer-cap-style lid off and drank a quarter of the bottle.

Note to self: buy a whole lot of Canada Dry and bring it to school. Stick it in a sub-space pocket if you have to.

"So, you wanna get started?" Jason asked me, and my blood pressure spiked. My eyelid twitched. Crap. It wasn't the question, although the idea of trigonometry and actually giving it more than a passing half-thought made my skin daydream about breaking out into hives. It was the way he said it. He was leaning over me (not fair), his chest barely two inches from my shoulder and upper right arm, and his voice had dropped like, fifty registers. His voice freaking rumbled like an earthquake. It felt like he'd belched a volcano, minus the toxic stench of sulfur, adding extra-hot magma strictly for my benefit. Good grief, I needed to watch porn or something if this was all it took to make me start sweating.

The heat at my shoulder increased. He was leaning in. I think my eyes crossed. Was I panting? Holy crap, I hoped I wasn't panting.

He'd showered. Not fair! The Freaking Red Freak freaking showered so now he didn't smell like a trunk full of old sweat socks. Now he smelled like... was that AXE? I'd read about AXE on the Internet, watched some of the advertisements on this website called YouTube. Generally, women attacked men who wore AXE and tried to rip off their clothes. There was one where a lady started practically having an orgasm against a shower pipe because the guy living in the apartment above her was using AXE shower gel and it was swirling down the drain. Was the Crimson Crusader wearing AXE? Is that why he suddenly smelled like a million bucks? Or had he gone surfing or something? Surfers always smelled good.

I just reread that sentence. Holy cow, I'm a surfer-smell slut. But it's true - sand, sea, and sun smell hot on skin. And Jason smelled like the ocean and the beach. Without the icky hot dog smell. One thing I loved about California - the beach. It smelled wonderful. Oh, crap, the Red Ranger smelled like the beach!

_Don't panic,_ I mumbled silently to myself, trying not to breathe through my nose. _Just... find a safe topic of conversation._

"Um... do you surf?" I blurted. If I had a third foot, one with cloaking technology and a spike attached, I'd kick myself in the back. The spike would hit my abdominal aorta - or my second heart - and kill me before I had to deal with the fall-out of that question. I couldn't tell him he smelled like a surfer. Argh!

"Yeah," he said. "Sometimes. Kim and Trini are in the Marine Biology Club and they had a field trip."

"Oh." Breathe. Just breathe. Not through the nose! "Where did they go?"

"To the land-based Catalina Institute. I had to do a current school event for US History and that was my free period, so I went with 'em. That's why I didn't get back until ten minutes before the bell rang."

Also why I hadn't noticed the tangy salt smell in Trig. My head had been killing me by the time he'd shown up. He could've had a third eye and a set of stomach tentacles and I wouldn't have noticed.

Well, I might have noticed the tentacles. I'd always wanted to see a guy with belly appendages.

"You smell like the ocean," my traitorous mouth informed him. Ratted out by my own trap. Jeez. With a groan, I slammed my forehead into the tabletop, wishing I was mute. Wishing I were dead. Maybe back in the space dumpster in cold storage. I at least didn't want to be in this room with a hot guy who smelled like the ocean, a guy that I was supposed to kill. "Why me?" I moaned.

"It's okay," Jason told me, taking the stool next to me. My eyes slid over to him. The angle was a little weird, seeing as how I was nose-to-nose with the black table. But I couldn't get my head up. I wanted to disappear too badly.

"I sound like a stalker," I told him, and flinched. My mouth needed to go. Preferably to hell.

"You sound like someone who pays attention. Okay, let's see what we can do about this test. Relax," he added, chuckling, and clapped my shoulder as if I were a dude. My skin burned where he touched me. My fingers started to tingle. Was I breathing? Or panting? Or neither one? Shoot.

See, there's a problem with the race my mother and I come from. We're horny, like, all the time. It sucks. Why? Because we only breed between a certain age. Granted, that age is like, fifteen to four hundred, but that's still not very long for a long-lived race like mine. I don't know why we're genetically coded like that, but we are. And the older we get, the worse the drive to breed becomes. My mother warned me that the whole cryogenic stasis thing messed with my breeding cycle. Thanks so much, Zordon. Physically, I'm only about sixteen. I've looked sixteen for about forty years prior to the Space Dumpster Enslavement.

For all you immortal-wannabes out there, having acne for three centuries blows. Think about that for a minute.

But I was in stasis for ten thousand years. I don't even know if our species normally lives that long. My uncles were babies when my mother and I were imprisoned (and later subjected to their own cold storage sentences), and my grandpa was in cryo already. So I don't have anything to use as a control group. But being a brood-ready Skarosen (my species) for ten thousand plus years has left me... um... desperate to pop out some babies.

At least, physically.

Mentally... I'd rather stick a fork in my eye.

So sitting next to a hot, sexually mature male wasn't helping at all. I could fix that... but I'd go blind. If I'd had a fork, we all know where it would probably end up. And I didn't want to be blind. And I liked being a virginal bad guy. It allowed me to surprise people.

Luckily, math was hard. I mean, I was okay with numbers, but trig tripped me the heck out. I could barely remember the definitions for sine, cosine, and tangent, even with the whole thing about soaking toes, much less do the math to find those three little demon principles. So instead of focusing on the Scarlet Surfer next to me, I had to keep my brain entrenched firmly in a labyrinth of numbers and definitions. By the end, despite another pain killer and three bottles of carbonated water, my brain was sizzling and my eye twitch was back.

"Okay, what's the definition of cosine?" Scarlet Schmuck asked me, and I lost it. It wasn't my fault. He freaking breathed on me. I don't know what kind of toothpaste he uses, but his breath smells like tangerines and lime sherbet! It was sweet, like vampire breath.

Yes, I have smelled vampire breath. On my home planet, they bottle it as a narcotic, to be inhaled for its euphoric properties.

Jason breathed on me. The scent hit me like a very hard, very wet kiss. My jaw dropped open. If I'd been a cartoon character instead of irritated, angsty me, my tongue would've fallen out of my mouth and rolled onto the floor like a red carpet. I could tell by the way the Red Ranger lost focus and got fuzzy that my eyes had probably rolled to opposite sides of my head and were definitely glazed over.

And then the question he'd asked actually penetrated and I panicked.

"I don't know!" I yelped, slamming my fist into my Trig book by accident. It hurt, but I did it again because it made my brain feel good. If it were possible to choke on your own heart, I would've at that moment. The Crimson Creep just watched me as I dropped my head to the glossy pages of my textbook. "I don't know! Why do I even have to take Trig anyway?"

"Your mom signed you up."

"I didn't want her to!" I shouted. I'd cracked. I'd gone nuts. I had had enough. Spy or no spy, I was going to get this off my chest. If my mom wanted to listen, then fine. Half-drunk from the ocean smell of Jason's skin and clothes and the citrus scent of his vampire breath, I let it all out. Well, almost all. The evil princess out for his blood thing was kept a tight secret somewhere in my pinky toe where it would be too much work for lazy me to dredge it up. "I hate my classes! I don't like weight training or PE or math or any of these things! I hate my teachers and Ms. Appleby is a fucking bitch!"

Instantly, my hand clapped over my mouth. Crap! I'd cussed in front of a Power Ranger. They were notorious for their clean language. They didn't even use the word "kill" or "crap" or even "crud." Jason would hate me. And didn't the Rangers _**like**_ the fat cow who'd given me detention? Crap, crap, crap!

"Sorry," I mumbled.

He stared at me in stony silence. My lip trembled behind my hands. Shoot! I was in trouble. Big, big trouble. I'd flunked my mission and it had only been eight days! Now the Red Ranger hated my guts because I'd lost control. All because of his vampire breath. Stupid Terran! Argh!

A tear rolled down my cheek. I practically punched myself in the face trying to swipe it away with my fist. Another one popped up. I bit back a scream of frustration and wiped it off. Three more snuck in around the back. At this, I gave up and dropped my head back onto my book. I didn't even stop the tears. What was wrong with me? I hadn't cried this much since... since that night, on the Planet of the Oceans.

"I hate this place," I moaned without thinking. "I want to go home. I just want to hide in my freaking closet." And then more tears came, drops and drops, practically rivers.

"What happened?" The Scarlet Schmuck asked me gently.

Slowly, my head came up. The sleeve of my jacket served as a good tissue. But his question hadn't made sense to me. What happened when? I cocked my head, sniffling. I felt ridiculous, but at least he wasn't staring at me anymore. Red Butler was carefully studying the tabletop in front of him, making sure not to look at me. I probably looked downright hideous with my fuzz head, splotchy red face, and snot-nose. Was that drool or snot or tears I felt smeared around my mouth? And my nose was stuffy, so I couldn't smell him.

"What?"

"What happened before you came here?" Jason asked me, reaching out to take one of my hands. The warmth coming off of his skin increased until it nearly blistered my skin. I sucked in a breath. His hand closed around mine. I might have whimpered, but I really tried not to. "Something happened. I can see it in your face. You're scared all the time. Weird things scare you. Paper cuts, the dark, things like that. What is it?"

His thumb was right over my knuckles. My fingertips, ice cold until then, warmed against his damp palm. Was he nervous about something? His dark eyes burned into mine. Just a touch of his ocean smell and the AXE found my nose. Another tear leaked out. Was I just hormonal or was there something wrong with me? The Red Ranger leaned in. I did too, drawn, like a magnet. I couldn't pull away from him. My gaze stuck fast, riveted to his face as he spoke again.

"You can tell me, Rachel. What's the matter?"

"I...." Something rushed up, hot and heavy. I felt like I was choking on nothing. My lungs burned, my chest scalding hot. Was I not breathing again? I sucked in air, trying not to gasp. "I...." No words came. My eyes turned to grit. What was I trying to say? Even I didn't know. "I can't... I don't...." Lips trembled. I was barely a millimeter away from breaking down completely. The dimness around us deepened, darkening, and the fear rose up like a tidal wave. The dark... knives in the dark.... I whimpered.

"Rachel-"

"I have to go!" I yelped, grabbed my stuff, and ran. I tripped, my foot catching a table leg, and I hit the ground with enough force to slam the air out of my body.

"Rachel!"

I might've screamed at him to go away, to leave me alone. I don't know. I don't remember. But I didn't wait for him to obey or to come after me. I was on my feet and out the door with its sign that said _Tutoring In Session_ before Jason had time to grab his stuff and follow.

.

Tommy trailed off and sat in the big, leather armchair, blinking down at the hastily scribbled pages in the red leather journal. For a moment, his mouth gawped like a fish's. Lily giggled. Casey cleared his throat, trying to catch the ex-Black Dino Ranger's attention. Finally, Dr. Oliver looked up and realized that Fran, Lily, Casey, and Theo were still staring at him, waiting for him to continue reading out of Razielle's diary.

"Here," the Ranger ally said, holding the red book to Casey. "How about you read?"

"Um...." Casey wasn't too sure about this. The Red Ranger had been enjoying the soothing cadence of Dr. O's voice. Despite the aura of sadness and pain emanating from the journal, and despite the fact that, when not inundated with sadness, pain, or fear, Razielle was a raging nymphomaniac, Dr. Oliver's way of reading the words and the sarcasm and dry wit of the Princess's words made it easier to deal with. "I'd rather you did it."

"My throat hurts."

"Oh... um... okay," the Red Jungle Fury Ranger replied, and took the journal. Flipping through the pages, Casey saw something that literally dragged him to a halt in his search for the group's spot. Instead, his eyes latched onto hastily scribbled words smeared and splattered with what had to have been either rain or tears. The words grabbed any thoughts of Razielle's breeding issues and dropped them out the window.

_"__She's dead__,"_ he read silently, and a shard of ice stabbed into his chest. "_No, no... she's dead. He killed her, I can't believe it, he actually killed her. I can't stop crying. I can't. What was she doing with them anyway? What was she doing there? She should have been safe and now she's dead and I'm going to kill them! All of them! Where is__Jason__? __Where is he!? That son of a whoring bitch, where __**IS**__ he?__"_

Slivers of fear stabbed deep into Casey's heart and brain. Who was Razielle going to kill? Who had died? And what could possibly have happened, that Rita's daughter would say such a horrible thing about Jason? She'd been sarcastic about the Red Morphing Ranger before, but that was just her way. There was no playfulness or sarcasm in these words. Only pain and hatred. Even when Jason had broken up with her, there hadn't been this kind of black rage against the Red Morphing Ranger. What could possibly have happened?

"Casey?"

Lily's voice, gentle and probing, broke through his internal interrogation of the diary. With a start of surprise, the Red Ranger hauled his mind back to the present and realized he was still staring at the pages, which had begun to flip closed. Hastily, he found their spot in the book and began to read, trying to block out the screaming agony soaked into the words he had read.

_"__Of course, I had to go back. It was detention, and it was required. No attendance and I'd be screwed. They'd expel me, and my mission would fail. So I went back to tutoring with __the Crimson Creep__ the next Monday. He didn't say anything about what had happened between us, and I didn't either. The tension was still there, though. It never left. My first slip-up had made sure of that._

_" __'Jason__tutored me for three weeks before anything apocalyptic happened. After the first day, the tension only got worse. Worse and worse and worse, curse it. I hated that. But at the same time, it was the best thing in the world. I was so horrendously bored at this Terran school and mine and__the Crimson Crusader's__mental sparring and emotional war added spice to my incredibly dull life. For the first quarter of school, my Mother would spare Angel Grove her attacks, focusing them on other, nearby planets, to give me a chance to settle in. So there were no evil plots - other than my mission - to fill my time. Only the tutoring sessions...._

_" 'The first was the easiest. And after three weeks of our little war, I nearly had another accident. I can't believe I was so stupid. But after all, I was still a kid. And accidents happen all the time. Don't they?'_ "

.

.

.

**Author's Note:** Don't own anything you recognize, blah-blah-blah. Anyways, hope you liked this chapter. Don't worry, the action part picks up next chapter with one of those tried-and-true Rita attacks on Angel Grove. Gotta love those. So look forward to the next chap!

* Red Butler and Buddy Blue are characters on Rainbow Brite. It's a play on the name Rhett Butler from _Gone with the Wind_. Red Butler is one of the Color Kids who works for Rainbow (along with Tangerine, Canary Yellow, Patty O'Green, Buddy Blue, Indigo, and Shy Violet). While Razielle is not referencing Rainbow Brite, I figured the name would fit Jason as well, along with all those other charming epithets (Scarlet Sissy, Crimson Creep, Ridiculous in Red, etc).

This chapter is over 6000 words long, so I cut it off here. Hope you enjoyed. Yes, Razielle is seriously conflicted. She's got a lot of things pulling her in different directions. Which one will win out? I don't think I even know that yet.

.

.


End file.
